i 
 
 Ei 
 
 KB 
 
 HHal 
 
 Mill 
 
 ! HI I 
 
 lilllj 
 
«5 •** 
 
 \ v ->;■ 
 
 ,0' 
 
 CI 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 fj- V 
 
 >: N* s 
 
 
 
 
 %$ 
 
 $ ** 
 
^ aV^ : 
 
 
 
 
 ^ -p 
 
 a\ 
 
 
 / V', 1 
 
 
 
 
 W ' ^'^ 
 
 
 
 v> ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ I IS 
 
 
 .-£ 
 
Handy-Volume Series. 
 N°- VIII. 
 
 THE 
 
 Tin Trumpet. 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE SMITH. 
 
THE 
 
 Tin Trumpet. 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE SMITH, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "REJECTED ADDRESSES," "BRAMBLETYE HOUSE," 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 AUTHORISED EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., 8, 9 & 10, BOUVERIE ST. 
 
 1875. 
 
■pi? Sh 
 
 LONDON : 
 ERADBUKT, i.ONlSW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITBFJUAttS. 
 
NOTICE. 
 
 The Tin Trumpet is the whimsical name of a 
 work which, when published thirty-three years ago, had 
 but a small success, through the vagueness of its title, 
 through the concealment of its authorship, and through 
 the boldness of some of its opinions. It is, however, 
 a very remarkable work, full of wit and wisdom, and is 
 greatly prized by collectors, both for its worth and for 
 its scarceness. Its authorship has been confidently 
 ascribed to various writers, and particularly to Thackeray. 
 The real author's name is now for the first time acknow- 
 ledged, and that by permission of his family. 
 
{Original Title.) 
 
 THE TIN TRUMPET 
 
 OR 
 
 HEADS AND TALES 
 
 FOR THE WISE AND WAGGISH. 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JEFFERSON SAUNDERS, Esq. 
 
 Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem. "—Horace. 
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED FOR WHITTAKER & Co. 
 
 AVE MARIA LANE. 
 1836. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 O say that my deceased friend had always been 
 an eccentric creature, a humorist, an oddity, 
 will scarcely be received as a sufficient explana- 
 tion of the quaint title which he has thought 
 proper to affix to his work, and for which, 
 therefore, I feel it my first duty as an Editor, to account. 
 After the death of his wife, and, subsequently, of his 
 only child, to both of whom he had been most tenderly 
 attached, Dr. Chatfield sought relief from sorrow by frequent 
 changes of scene, and found such alleviation of mind in 
 wandering over the wilder and least frequented districts of 
 the north of England, as well as such an expanded field 
 for the exercise of his philanthropy, the ruling passion of 
 his soul, that he formed the Quixotic resolution of abandon- 
 ing his regular professional pursuits, then highly profitable, 
 and of exercising them gratuitously for the benefit of such 
 remote and forlorn objects, as he might encounter in that 
 erratic life which he had now determined on adopting. 
 Born in Yorkshire, and well acquainted with its loneliest 
 recesses, experience had convinced him that there were 
 many remote hamlets, as well as solitary hovels of wood 
 
x INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and turf-cutters, charcoal burners, and other peasants, where 
 much sickness and suffering were endured, either from local 
 difficulties, or from pecuniary inability to employ even a 
 village practitioner. To this class of indigent and obscure 
 sufferers, whom he visited in regular periodical excursions, 
 he devoted, for several years, his eminent professional skill, 
 his time, his cheerful powers of consolation, and no small 
 portion of his fortune, (which, since his retirement from 
 productive practice, was restricted to rather less than five 
 hundred a-year,) with a zeal, perseverance, and success, 
 utterly unparalleled, as I verily believe, except in the won- 
 ders of charity, accomplished with a similar income, by the 
 celebrated Man of Ross. 
 
 For the sake of his own health, which was now occa- 
 sionally impaired, as well as for the purpose of meeting 
 a circle of cherished friends, who usually betook themselves 
 to Harrowgate during the season, the Doctor made that 
 place his head-quarters for a portion of every summer. 
 Upon one of these visits he established a little society, 
 which met weekly at his lodgings, under the name of " The 
 Tea Party," to participate in his favourite beverage, and 
 to pass a few hours in rational conversation. From every 
 thing in the nature of a club, as the reader will perceive, on 
 a reference to that word in the present work, my friend 
 recoiled with an insurmountable aversion, only consenting 
 to be named President of the Tea Party, on condition that 
 it should consist of both sexes, and be governed by the 
 rules that he had drawn up for its regulation. These 
 exhibited, in several instances, their author's characteristic 
 whimsicality. To avoid the use of a hammer, which was 
 associated, in his mind, with the chairman of a club, it was 
 
INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 his good pleasure to suspend from his neck a small Tin 
 Trumpet, by sounding an alarum upon which he procured 
 order, when there was the smallest irregularity or deviation 
 from a punctilious courtesy on the part of any member. 
 The same Tin Trumpet, with a transferable steel-pen 
 affixed to its narrow end, served to register the proceedings 
 of the society in a book kept for that purpose ; as well as to 
 write on a slip of paper, for the information of the asso- 
 ciates, the subjects upon which they were to converse at 
 their next meeting. Not in any degree, however, could this 
 friendly party be assimilated to a debating society, though 
 its founder was anxious to avoid the common trivialities 
 of chit-chat, by devoting an hour and a half of their meeting 
 ot the consideration of some specific objects, of which several 
 were sometimes proposed for a single night. The remain- 
 ing hour and a half, for they met at seven, and parted at 
 ten, was given to tea, and such passing topics as might 
 be spontaneously suggested, and which generally assumed 
 a greater latitude, and more playful character, from the 
 previous limitation and partial restraint upon the general 
 volubility. In the presence of the Doctor, indeed, it was 
 almost impossible not to sympathise with his remarkably 
 cheerful temperament. 
 
 It was the founder's custom to note down in a common- 
 place book, such brief heads, or extracts, or allusions as 
 might bear upon the subject next to be considered; for it 
 will readily be conjectured that he himself was the principal 
 speaker. Loving truth better even than my late friend, I 
 am bound to confess that apophthegms, epigrammatical 
 turns, terse sayings, antithetical phrases, and even puerile 
 conceits, were his hobby-horse, and one which he occa- 
 
xii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 sionally rode even to a tiresome excess. Whatever of this 
 sort was elicited at the meetings, or subsequently presented 
 itself in his superficial reading, for he did not affect pro- 
 found literature, was transferred to his common-place book, 
 under different alphabetical heads, a process in which he 
 invariably employed the writing instrument to which we 
 have already alluded. This will explain the title of " The 
 Tin Trumpet " — given to his book, as well as the first part of 
 its second appellation—" Heads and Tales." 
 
 In elucidation of this latter word we must state that the 
 most important personage of the party, after its president, 
 was one Timothy Harrison, an independent Yorkshire 
 yeoman, and a not less singular character, though in a 
 different way, than his bosom friend, and latterly his almost 
 inseparable companion — the Doctor. Honest Tim, who was 
 the installed punster and wag, or, as the reader may rather 
 think, the Merry Andrew of the party, made it his business 
 to cap every grave remark or serious discussion with some 
 foolery, either in the shape of quibble, joke, anecdote, or 
 appropriate tale, most of which found their way to the 
 common-place book, and were generally assigned to their 
 author, under his initials of T. H. Many of these caudal 
 vertebra, or tale-joints, as he himself banteringly termed 
 them, I have ventured to expunge, as they would have 
 swelled the work to a disproportionate size ; several of his 
 bon-mots have suffered a similar fate ; though I am still 
 apprehensive that I may be thought to have used the 
 pruning knife much too sparingly. By his droll and flexible 
 features, his power of mimicry, and his broad rustic humour, 
 Tim was expressly qualified to be the wag of a provincial 
 coterie j but where you cannot print the countenance and 
 
INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 manner, it is sometimes dangerous to publish the joke. Not 
 a few of his jests, for he was as bold a plagiarist as his 
 friend, were stolen from newspapers, or other equally ac- 
 cessible sources ; while others may even be traced back to 
 Joe Miller, an authority which is occasionally acknowledged 
 under the Latin alias of Josephus Molitor. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that the following little work 
 cannot set up much claim to originality, either in its serious 
 or jocose departments ; while even its form was suggested, 
 as I have heard its author admit, by some humorous 
 alphabetical definitions which appeared several years ago 
 in one of our magazines. From the writer of those papers, 
 as well as from all others who might serve his purpose, 
 not excepting the Edinburgh Review, of which he was 
 a constant reader, he borrowed without compunction. 
 Wherever he made verbal quotations of any extent, it will 
 be seen that he refers to the original; and he often re- 
 gretted that the omission of noting down his authorities, 
 prevented him from acknowledging them upon other and 
 all occasions. With the materials thus accumulated, he 
 interspersed, as he proceeded, his own sentiments upon 
 every topic that called for their avowal. Knowing that they 
 express the conscientious convictions of an eminently pious 
 and virtuous man, I have published them without hesitation, 
 but I think it right to put upon record my total dissent 
 from many of his views and doctrines. Intimate, indeed, as 
 was our friendship for a long course of years, we differed, 
 to to cceto, upon most of the leading subjects that divide 
 the opinions of mankind. In his Liberal, not to say Radical 
 notions, I was decidedly opposed to him ; while my reve- 
 rence for the Established Church, of which I am proud to 
 
xlv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 call myself a member, made the discussion of its discipline 
 and tenets, in both of which he maintained the necessity of 
 a Reform, a forbidden subject between us. 
 
 Deeming it impious to suppose that the investigation of 
 truth, conscientiously pursued, could possibly lead to any 
 other results than an additional confirmation of the great- 
 ness, goodness, and glory of God, Dr. Chatfield was a 
 fearless and zealous explorer of many questions which would 
 have been avoided by the timid and the indifferent. Creeds, 
 articles, and all the ceremonials of religion, he held in slight 
 estimation, compared to heart-felt, practical, vital Christi- 
 anity ; yet a more devout man I never knew. His religion 
 was a sentiment in which his whole heart was steeped, and 
 which exhibited itself in an ever present sense of profound 
 gratitude to the Creator, and an all embracing love of his 
 creatures. His strange, and sometimes startling notions 
 exposed him to occasional attacks of considerable sharp- 
 ness, which he invariably bore with such a Christian meek- 
 ness, and defended himself with a sweetness so conciliatory 
 and unassuming, that even those who impugned his opi- 
 nions, could not help admiring their placid and philosophic 
 maintainer. 
 
 With such gentleness of disposition, it may seem that 
 the satirical character, occasionally perceptible in his book, 
 is not altogether in accordance ; but it may literally be 
 affirmed of him, to use a homely saying, that his bark was 
 worse than his bite. Personalities there are none throughout 
 the whole work. Taking for his motto — " parcere personis, 
 dicere de vitiis," — he visited the offence not the offender, 
 regardless of the hacknied objection that, to exercise such 
 a misplaced lenity, is to lash the dice and to spare the dicer. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xv 
 
 That predilection for point and antithesis to which we have 
 already alluded, and which forms the besetting sin of his 
 stile, often betrayed him into a severity of expression quite 
 foreign to his real nature. He might be caustic with his 
 pen, especially if an epigrammatic turn were at stake; but 
 his lips could not utter anything intentionally bitter, nor 
 could his heart harbour a single angry feeling. This is 
 not the place, however, to expatiate upon his character, 
 as it is my intention to make his life, for which I had been 
 collecting materials long before his decease, the subject of 
 a second volume; and I avail myself of the present oppor- 
 tunity, to request that his Yorkshire and other correspon- 
 dents will add to my large stock of his amusing letters, by 
 forwarding any that they may possess, to the Publisher of 
 this work, under whose inspection they will be copied, and 
 punctually, as well as thankfully returned, to their respective 
 owners. 
 
 Most of the peasants and cotters in the northern and 
 western wapentakes of Yorkshire, were familiar with the 
 Doctor's old white-tailed dun horse, as well as with his 
 antique broad-winged whiskey. In the boot of this rickety 
 vehicle were usually stowed a medicine-chest, a box of 
 linen, and other travelling indispensables, the respective 
 packages being steadied by a few well-worn books wedged 
 in between them. Latterly he had seldom made an ex- 
 cursion without " honest Tim," whose pranks, jokes, and 
 buffooneries, lent some support to the idea entertained by 
 many strangers, on their first appearance, that the compa- 
 nions were an itinerant Quacksalver and his Zany. Nor 
 was it easy to remove this impression, so far as the Merry 
 Andrew was concerned ; but it was impossible to gaze upon 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the- benevolent countenance of his friend, whose Quaker's 
 attire, bald forehead, and silver side locks descending to 
 his shoulders, gave him altogether a most venerable appear- 
 ance, without a quick conviction that his errand was one 
 of pure philanthropy, — and that his purposes, like his aspect, 
 were high and holy. 
 
 By his will, Dr. Chatfield bequeathed to the Editor, the 
 whole of his manuscripts, consisting of tales, ancient and 
 modern — fugitive poems — a few essays on medical subjects, 
 and the volumes now submitted to the public. From his 
 poems I have made such a selection as will afford a fair 
 sample of his general powers in this department of litera- 
 ture. They exhibit much smoothness and facility in the 
 versification, and no small diversity of stile, since they are 
 perfectly free from the forced conceits and artificial glitter 
 of his prose compositions. Respecting the Tales, he left 
 no instructions — and future circumstances must decide 
 whether any of them shall ever see the light; but it was 
 one of his last requests that "The Tin Trumpet" should 
 be prepared for immediate publication. The quantity and 
 the confusion of the materials, rendered their selection and 
 arrangement a matter of no small difficulty and of some 
 unexpected delay ; but I have executed my task to the best 
 of my ability and judgment, and I now commit the work to 
 the indulgence of the reader, again requesting him to bear 
 in mind that I broadly dissent from many of the crude 
 notions and fanciful theories broached by my late excellent 
 
 but eccentric friend. 
 
 J. S. 
 
 Harrowgate, 
 
 February, 1836. 
 
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 Ad Candidum Lectorein. 
 
 Cum legis hunc nostrum, Lector studiose, libellum, 
 
 Decedat vultu tetrica ruga tuo. 
 Non sunt haec tristi conscripta Catonibus ore, 
 
 Non Heraclitis, non gravibus Curiis : 
 Sed si Heracliti, Curii, si forte Catones, 
 
 Adjicere hue oculos et legere ista velint, 
 Multa hie invenient quag possint pellere curas, 
 
 Plurima quae msestos exhilarare queant. 
 
THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 HEADS AND TALES. 
 
 B.C.DARIAN — seems to have been an ancient 
 term for a pedagogue. Wood, in his Athense 
 Oxonienses, speaking of Thomas Farnabie, 
 says — " When he landed in Cornwall, his dis- 
 tresses made him stoop so low, as to be an 
 A.b.c.darian, and several were taught their horn books by 
 him." By assuming this title, its wearer certainly proves 
 himself to be a man of letters ; but my friend T. H. suggests, 
 that the schoolmaster who wishes to establish his aptitude 
 for his office, instead of taking the three first, had better 
 designate himself by the two last letters of the alphabet. 
 
 ABLATIVE CASE— one that now is, or very soon will 
 be, applicable to usurped power, to unjust privileges, and 
 to abuses of all sorts. Though the schoolmaster is abroad, 
 the times are more ungrammatical than ever. A borough- 
 monger has ceased to be in the nominative case ; there is no 
 longer a dative case to the Pension List ; and when the 
 public is in the accusative case, it governs the party or thing 
 implicated, and makes it fall into the ablative case abso- 
 lute. Though corruptions are nouns substantive, they cannot 
 
 B 
 
2 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 stand by themselves ; and abuses, which used to be plural, 
 will soon become singular. The verb "to love" is declined, 
 not conjugated. Standard words, to which the utmost im- 
 portance was attached by the wisdom of our ancestors, such, 
 for instance, as " rotten boroughs," are arbitrarily cut off by 
 elision. When John Bull is in the imperative mood, he is 
 now, at the same time, in the potential ; while the present 
 tense has no longer the smallest reference to the past, pro- 
 vided it can improve the future. But we have still more 
 startling changes ; — Lady A. is a masculine, and Lord B. is 
 a feminine person. What can be expected but irregularity 
 and disturbance, when our grammar is in such a state of 
 anarchy ? This comes of Reform ! ! Ah ! it is to be feared 
 that we shall none of us have the consolation of Danjeau, 
 the French grammarian, who, when told that a revolution 
 was approaching, exclaimed, rubbing his hands, " Well, come 
 what may, I have two hundred verbs well conjugated in my 
 desk!" 
 
 ABLUTION — a duty somewhat too strictly inculcated in 
 the Mahometan ritual, and sometimes too laxly observed 
 in Christian practice. As a man may have a dirty body, 
 and an undefiled mind, so may he have clean hands in a 
 literal, and not in a metaphorical sense. All washes and 
 cosmetics without, he may yet labour under a moral hydro- 
 phobia within. Pleasant to see an im-puritan of this stamp 
 holding his nose, lest the wind should come between an 
 honest scavenger and his gentility, while his own character 
 stinks in the public nostrils. Oh, if the money and the 
 pains that we bestow upon perfumes and adornments for 
 the body, were applied to the purification and embellish- 
 ment of the mind ! Oh ! if we were as careful to polish our 
 manners as our teeth, to make our temper as sweet as our 
 breath, to cut off our peccadilloes as to pare our nails, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 3 
 
 to be as upright in character as in person, to save our 
 souls as to shave our chins, what an immaculate race should 
 we become ! Exteriorly, we are not a filthy people. We 
 throw so much dirt at our neighbours, that we have none 
 left for ourselves. We are only unclean in our hearts and 
 lives. As occasional squalor is the worst evil of poverty 
 and labour, so should constant cleanliness be the greatest 
 luxury of wealth and ease ; yet even our aristocracy are 
 not altogether without reproach in this respect. It is well 
 known, that the celebrated Lord Nelson had not washed 
 his hands for the last eight years of his life. Alas 1 upon 
 what trifles may our reputation for cleanliness depend ! 
 Even a foreign accent may ruin us. In a trial, where a 
 German and his wife were giving evidence, the former was 
 asked by the counsel, " How old are you ?" — " I am dirty" 
 — " And what is your wife ? " — " Mine wife is dirty-two."— 
 " Then, Sir, you are a very nasty couple, and I wish to have 
 nothing further to say to either of you." 
 
 ABRIDGMENT — anything contracted into a small com- 
 pass; such, for instance, as the abridgment of the statutes 
 in twenty volumes, folio. To make a good abridgment, 
 requires as much time and talent as to write an original 
 work ; a fact of which the reader will find abundant proof as 
 he proceeds ! When Queen Anne told Dr. South that his 
 sermon had only one fault — that of being too short, — he 
 replied, that he should have made it shorter if he had had 
 more time. How comes it that no enterprising bookseller 
 has ever thought of publishing " an Abridgment of the Lives 
 of the Fathers ?" I know not whether the religious public 
 would give it encouragement, but I am confident, that in 
 this land of primogeniture and entailed estates, there is not 
 an heir in the three kingdoms who would not exert himself 
 to ensure its success. 
 
 b 2 
 
4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 ABSCESS — a morbid tumour, frequently growing above 
 the shoulders, and swelling to a considerable size, when it 
 comes to a head, with nothing in it. It is not always a 
 natural disease, for nature abhors a vacuum ; yet fools, fops, 
 and fanatics are very subject to it, and it sometimes attacks 
 old women of both sexes. " I wish to consult you upon a 
 little project I have formed," said a noodle to his friend. 
 " I have an idea in my head — " " Have you ?" interposed the 
 friend, with a look of great surprise ; " then you shall have 
 my opinion at once : keep it there / — it may be some time 
 before you get another." 
 
 ABSOLUTE GOVERNMENT.— There is a simplicity 
 and unity in despotism, which is not without its advantages, 
 if every despot were to be a Titus or a Vespasian — to 
 unite great talents with a clement and benevolent heart. 
 But the chances against such a fortunate conjunction are 
 almost incalculable; and even where it occurs, its effects 
 may be suddenly defeated, and the best sovereign be con- 
 verted into the worst, by an attack of gout, or a fit of 
 indigestion. Besides, there are few who can drink of un- 
 restrained power, without being intoxicated, or, perhaps, 
 maddened. Nero, before he succeeded to the crown, was 
 remarkable for his moderation and humanity. So true is 
 the dictum of Tacitus, that the throne of a despot is gene- 
 rally ascended by a wild beast. Free institutions are the 
 best, indeed the only security, both for the governed and 
 the governor; for there is no remedy against a tyrant but 
 assassination, of which ultima ratio populi, even our own 
 times have furnished instances at St. Petersburg and 
 Constantinople. An hereditary monarchy with institutions 
 adapted to the state of knowledge, and the diffusion of 
 moral power, or, in other words, leaning towards republi- 
 canism, seems to be the form of government most appro- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 5 
 
 priate for a civilized and enlightened nation in the nine- 
 teenth century. The greatest strength should be at the base, 
 not at the top ; for it is as difficult to overturn a pyramid, as 
 to preserve the equilibrium of an inverted cone. What an 
 illustration of the spirit of the times, and what an instructive 
 lesson to monarchs, is the startling fact, that the present 
 rulers of Sweden, France, and Belgium, are not the regular 
 inheritors of the crowns they wear, but sovereigns elected 
 by the most powerful of all sovereigns — the people ; while 
 the pseudo-legitimate kings of Portugal and Spain have been 
 formally repudiated, and are wanderers on the face of the 
 earth ! Few modern despots can calculate on being so 
 fortunate as the Turk Mustapha, who, having rebelled 
 against his brother, was taken prisoner, and ordered for 
 execution on the following morning. The Sultan, however, 
 being suddenly seized with the colic, accompanied, per- 
 haps, with some fraternal, as well as internal qualms, 
 ordered the decapitation to be deferred for two days, during 
 which he died, and his imprisoned brother quietly suc- 
 ceeded to the throne. " O happy Mustapha ! " exclaimed 
 the Sultaness, "you were born to be lucky, for you have 
 not only derived life from your mother's stomach, but from 
 your brother's !" 
 
 ABSOLUTION, Self — generously pronouncing our 
 own pardon. Such is the power in the human mind of 
 adapting itself to circumstances, that we can reconcile our- 
 selves, at least, partially, to our own crimes and infamy. 
 The stings of conscience would be intolerable, could we 
 not lay some nattering unction to our souls, and steal relief 
 from self-delusion. It may be doubted, whether the greatest 
 villain in the world ever thought himself much worse than 
 some of his neighbours, or was ever without his share of those 
 extenuating pleas, subterfuges, and shufflings, in which the 
 
6 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 mind is so subtle a casuist. A man is sure of his own good 
 word, and if it be the* only one he has to expect, he draws 
 upon it the more liberally. Another is worse than himself, 
 or he fancies him to be so, and he forthwith imagines that 
 he is a moral character, because he is not the basest pro- 
 fligate in existence. We claim praise for not having pushed 
 our vices farther, but we feel no shame for having carried 
 them so far ; as if there were a positive merit in sinning, pro- 
 vided we stop short of the ne plus ultra of turpitude. 
 
 ABSURDITY — anything advanced by our opponents, 
 contrary to our own practice, or above our comprehension, — 
 and, therefore, a term very liberally used, because it is ap- 
 plied in exact proportion to our own ignorance. Nothing to 
 which we are so quick-sighted in another, so blind in our- 
 selves, not only individually, but nationally. " Comment /" 
 exclaims the French sailor in Josephus Molitor, when he 
 saw Ironmonger Lane written on the corner of a street in 
 London, which he read, "Irons manger Pane." — " Comment 1 
 Es qe qu^on mange des anes dans qe pays ci ? Mais, quelle 
 absurdite '/" How many of us, in travelling, exhibit our own, 
 in imputing an imaginary absurdity to others ! " How ridi- 
 culous !" exclaims the travelled servant in one of Dr. Moore's 
 novels, " to dress the French regiments of the line in blue, 
 — a colour which, as all the world knows, is only proper for 
 the Oxford Blues and the Artillery." Some of our highest 
 classes are unconscious imitators of the knight of the 
 shoulder-knot. 
 
 Of the Reductio ad absurdum, a very useful weapon of logic 
 in arguing with ultras of any class, I know not a happier 
 illustration than the Duke of Buckingham's reply to Dryden's 
 famous line — 
 
 "My wound is great, because it is so small." 
 " Then 'twould be greater were it none at all." 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 7 
 
 ABUSE, Intemperate — excites our sympathies, not for the 
 abuser, but the abusee, a fact which some of our virulent 
 critics and political writers are very apt to forget. Like 
 other poisons, when administered in too strong a dose, it is 
 thrown off by the intended victim, and often relieves, where 
 it was meant to destroy. If the wielder of the weapon be 
 such an unskilful sportsman as to overcharge his piece, he 
 must not be surprised if it explode, and wound no one but 
 himself. Dirt wantonly cast, only acts like fullers' earth, 
 defiling for the moment, but purifying in the end ; so that 
 those who are the most bespattered, come out the most im- 
 maculate. Pleasant was the well-known revenge of the 
 vilipended author, who having in vain endeavoured to pro- 
 pitiate his critic by returning eulogy for abuse, sent him at 
 last the following epigram : — 
 
 ' ' With industry I spread your praise, 
 With equal you my censure blaze ; 
 But faith ! 'tis all in vain we do, 
 The world believes' nor me, nor you." 
 
 ABUSES — see Tory Administration, passim. Thank 
 Heaven, the times are changed, and those who refuse to give 
 up abuses, will inevitably be called upon to surrender uses. 
 Will they take a hint, and make a compromise in time, or 
 like the boroughmongers, dig a pit for themselves to fall 
 into ? For their own sakes I hope they will yield in time ; 
 for the sake of the country I might wish them to be obstinate. 
 
 ACCIDENT. — Fanatics, whose inordinate conceit prompts 
 them to believe that the Deity must be more engrossed with 
 the affairs of an obscure Muggletonian in Ebenezer Alley, 
 Shoreditch, than with the general and immutable laws of the 
 universe, presumptuously wrest every unexpected occurrence, 
 in which themselves are concerned, into a particular Provi- 
 
8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 dence, more especially if it be an escape from any sort of 
 danger. As the risk, however, must come from the same 
 source as the deliverance, — as a providential escapej may 
 with equal propriety be termed a providential exposure to 
 imminent peril, — this hazardous doctrine, like a two-edged 
 sword, must cut both ways ; and according to the sanguine 
 or desponding temperament of the expounder, will tend to 
 generate either an overwhelming arrogance, or a dark 
 despair. A plot is formed, to way-lay and murder a man, on 
 his way home at night. He gets drunk, takes the wrong 
 road and escapes. Even a Muggletonian would hesitate at 
 calling this a providential intoxication, and yet he often uses 
 the term when it is quite as inapplicable and indecorous. 
 Occurrences of this description may be improved into moral 
 warnings without supposing any special deviation from the 
 laws of nature. There is a Providence ever watching over 
 the destinies of mankind, but we should not the less on that 
 account observe the maxim of Horace — Nee Deus intersit 
 nisi dignus vindice nodus. The uncharitable forgetfulness 
 of this rule was once well reproved by Voltaire, who hap- 
 pened to be in company with a fanatical old lady during a 
 violent thunder storm, when she screamed out, that the 
 house would be dashed to pieces upon their heads on 
 account of his impiety. " Know, madam," said the Patriarch 
 — " that I have said more good of the Deity in a single verse, 
 than you will ever think of him in the whole course of your 
 life." 
 
 Father Mabillon, who had been of a very narrow capacity 
 in his youth, fell, at the age of twenty-six, against a stone 
 staircase, fractured his skull, was trepanned, and after that 
 operation, possessed a luminous understanding, and an 
 astonishing zeal for study. We submit this accident to the 
 joint and serious consideration of the Muggletonians and 
 Phrenologists, but without recommending either party to 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 9 
 
 anticipate the same results, should they be disposed to make 
 a similar experiment upon their own skulls. 
 
 ACCOMPLISHMENTS— in women all that can be sur> 
 plied by the dancing-master, music-master, mantua-maker 
 and milliner : in men, tying a cravat, talking nonsense, 
 playing at billiards, dressing like a real, and driving like an 
 amateur coachman. The latter is an excusable ambition, 
 even in our noblemen, for it shows that they know them- 
 selves, and have found a properer place, and more congenial 
 elevation than the peerage. Some there are, who, deeming 
 dissolute manners an accomplishment, endeavour to show 
 by their profligacy that they know the world, an example 
 which might be dangerous, but that the world knows them. 
 Accomplishments are sociable — but nothing so sociable as a 
 cultivated mind. 
 
 ACTOR. — How often do we quote Shakspeare's dictum, 
 that— 
 
 "All the world's a stage, 
 
 And all the men and women merely players," 
 
 without reflecting upon its close applicability, not only to the 
 classes he has specified, but to almost every individual in 
 existence. The laws of society, and the restraints upon 
 opinion, compel us all to be actors and hypocrites, simulators 
 and dissimulators; and the more servile the observance of 
 this slavish disingenuousness, the greater the assumed civili- 
 zation ! Oh, for a week's social intercourse in the Palace of 
 Truth of M. de Genlis, that we might see what capital actors 
 we have all been when out of it ; especially those who had 
 been playing the parts of Maw-worm and Cantwell ! 
 
 Diderot has endeavoured to prove that in the delineation 
 of the passions — " He best shall paint them who shall feel 
 them least," and that an actor, injured rather than benefited 
 
10 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 by an intense feeling of the emotions he represents, is never 
 so sure to agitate the souls of his hearers, as when his own 
 is perfectly at ease. We believe that he may excite without 
 being excited, for the same reason that the most sensitive 
 young lady will remain unmoved at the hundredth re-perusal 
 of the tragedy, which at first drew a flood of tears from her 
 eyes ; but the mimic, in order to carry our sympathies with 
 him, must at least have a certain degree of susceptibility in 
 himself. How can he successfully study or understand a 
 character if totally incapable of feeling it? Speaking, as it 
 were, an unknown language, he must deliver it, without 
 adaptation or expression, and consequently without effect.— 
 His emotion may be as transient as you please, but it must 
 be once felt, once impressed upon the actor, if it is to impress 
 the audience. To suppose that studied and artificial, can be 
 more appropriate to the stage than real passion, is a contra- 
 diction in terms, for it is a remarkable fact, that deep and 
 genuine emotion, even in the humblest persons, is never un- 
 dignified, never ungraceful. 
 
 An adherence to nature, however, is by no means incom- 
 patible with a due regard to the Thespian art, which requires 
 elaborate study, and to a heightening of the effect by profes- 
 sional, or even mechanical aids. Vivid conception, and 
 keen sensibility, will not of themselves make a good actor ; 
 but it may be questioned, whether a good actor can be made 
 without them. Rare indeed is the physical and moral com- 
 bination that produces a superior performer, as will at once 
 appear if we compare the best amateur, with a second or 
 even a third rate professional actor. What miserable mum- 
 mery are private theatricals ! At those given last year at 
 
 Hatfield House, old General G was pressed by a lady to 
 
 say whom he liked best of all the actors. Notwithstanding 
 his usual bluntness, he evaded the question for some time, 
 but being importuned for an answer, he at length growled, — 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. n 
 
 " Well, madam, if you will have a reply, I liked the prompter 
 the best, because I heard the most of him, and saw the least 
 of him!" 
 
 ADDRESS — generally a string of fulsome compliments 
 and professions, indiscriminately lavished upon every king 
 or individual in authority, in order to assure him of the par- 
 ticular, personal, and exclusive veneration in which he is 
 held by those who, being the very obedient humble servants 
 of circumstances, would pay equal homage to Jack Ketch, if 
 he possessed equal power. In the latter case, they would 
 perhaps attempt to dignify his person, and his office by some 
 courteous periphrase, or concealing both beneath the appro- 
 priate veil of a dead language, would speak of him as — Vir 
 excellentissimus, strangulandi peritus. 
 
 In a Shrewsbury Address to James I., his loyal subjects 
 expressed a wish that he might reign over them as long as 
 sun, moon, and stars should endure. — "I suppose, then," 
 observed the monarch, "they mean my successor to reign 
 by candle-light." 
 
 ADMIRATION. — We always love those who admire us, 
 says Rochefoucauld, — but we do not always love those whom 
 we admire. From the latter clause an exception might have 
 been made in favour of self, for self-love is the source of self- 
 admiration ; and this is the safest of all loves, for most 
 people may indulge it without the fear of a rival. 
 
 ADMITTING yourself out of court — a legal phrase, signi- 
 fying a liberality of concession to your opponent by which 
 you destroy your own cause. This excess of candour was 
 well illustrated by the Irishman, who boasted that he had 
 often skated sixty miles a day. " Sixty miles !" exclaimed 
 an auditor — " that is a great distance : it must have been 
 
12 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 accomplished when the days were longest." — " To be sure it 
 was ; I admit that," cried the ingenious Hibernian. 
 
 ADULTERER — one who has been guilty of perjury } 
 commonly accompanied with ingratitude and hypocrisy, an 
 offence softened down by the courtesy of a sympathising 
 world, into " a man of gallantry, a gay person somewhat too 
 fond -of intrigue ;" or a woman "who has had a little slip, 
 committed a faux pas" &c. — " Pleasant but wrong," was the 
 apology of the country squire, who being detected in an in- 
 trigue with the frail rib of his groom, maintained that he had 
 not offended against the law, since we are only commanded 
 not to sin with another man's wife, whereas, this was his own 
 man's wife. 
 
 ADVERSITY — is very often a blessing in disguise, which 
 by detaching us from earth and drawing us towards heaven, 
 gives us, in the assurance of lasting joys, an abundant 
 recompence for the loss of transient ones. " Whom the 
 Lord loveth he chasteneth." Many a man in losing his 
 fortune has found himself, and been ruined into salvation ; 
 for though God demands the whole heart, which we could 
 not give him when we shared it with the world, he will never 
 reject the broken one, which we offer him in our hour of 
 sadness and reverse. Misfortunes are moral bitters, which 
 frequently restore the healthy tone of the mind, after it has 
 been cloyed and sickened by the sweets of prosperity. The 
 spoilt children of the world, like their juvenile namesakes, 
 are generally a source of unhappiness to others, without 
 being happy in themselves. 
 
 ADVICE — almost the only commodity which the world 
 is lavish in bestowing, and scrupulous in receiving, although 
 it may be had grate's, with an allowance to those who take a 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 13 
 
 quantity. We seldom ask it until it is too late, and still 
 more rarely take it while there is yet time to profit by it. 
 Great tact and delicacy are required, either in conferring or 
 seeking this perilous boon, for where people do not take your 
 counsel they generally take offence; and even where they 
 do, you can never be sure that you have not given pain in 
 giving advice. We have our revenge for this injustice. If 
 an acquaintance pursue some unfortunate course, in spite of 
 our dissuasions, we feel more gratified by the confirmation of 
 our evil auguries, than hurt by the misfortunes of our friend ; 
 for that man must be a sturdy moralist who does not love 
 his own judgment better than the interest of his neighbours. 
 This may help to explain Rochefoucauld's dictum, that there 
 is something, even in the misfortunes of our best friends, 
 which is not altogether displeasing to us. 
 
 To decline all advice, unless the example of the giver con- 
 firms his precepts, would be about as sapient as if a traveller 
 were to refuse to follow the directions of a finger-post, unless 
 it drew its one leg out of the ground, and walked, or rather 
 hopped after its own finger. 
 
 ADVOWSON — the purchaseable right (purchaseable 
 even by a Jew, Pagan, or Mahometan,) of controlling the 
 souls of a whole parish by appointing the clergyman, from 
 whom its inhabitants must receive their spiritual instruction, 
 and to whom they are compelled to pay tithes, even although 
 they should disapprove his doctrine, despise his abilities, and 
 dislike his character. Advowsons are temporal inheritances, 
 which may be granted by deed or will, and are assets in the 
 hands of executors ; so carefully is the worship of Mammon 
 preserved by those who solemnly protest that they are not 
 given to filthy lucre ! A clergyman may purchase a next 
 presentation, provided the living be not actually vacant at 
 the time ; and even where it is, he may accomplish that 
 
i 4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 object, through the instrumentality of friends, without incur- 
 ring the penalties of Simony. We should deem it a mon- 
 strous oppression, were an apothecary or a lawyer to be 
 imposed upon a populous and enlightened parish at the 
 arbitrary fiat of a patron, who would not hear of objection, 
 or even of inquiry into his character and capacity ; and yet 
 the wrong in the imposition of a spiritual guide is still more 
 flagrant, by the whole difference between the soul and the 
 body, between time and eternity. 
 
 Can the clerical purchaser of a next presentation be always 
 sure that he will not sigh for the death of the incumbent, 
 because he sighs for his living ? If not, religion, reason, and 
 justice, seem equally to require that the temptation of saleable 
 advowsons should be removed from his path, and that these 
 spiritual rotten boroughs should be consigned to the tomb of 
 their parliamentary brethren in schedule A. 
 
 AFFECTION, Filial — an implanted instinct, exalted by a 
 feeling of gratitude and a sense of duty. — The Roman 
 daughter, who nourished her imprisoned father, when con- 
 demned to be starved to death, from her own breast, has 
 generally been adduced as the noblest recorded instance of 
 filial affection ; but the palm may almost be contested by an 
 Irish son, if we may receive without suspicion the evidence 
 of a fond and doting father — " Ah now, my darlint ! " ex- 
 claimed the latter, when his boy threatened to enlist in the 
 army — " would you be laving your poor ould father that 
 doats upon ye ? You, the best and the most dutiful of all 
 my children, and the only one that never struck me when I 
 was down ! " 
 
 AFFLICTION. — A French writer, arguing, perhaps, from 
 the analogy of the English language, wherein two negatives 
 constitute an affirmative, observes that deux afflictions wises 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 15 
 
 ensemble fteuvent devenir une consolation, an experiment 
 which few, we apprehend, will be anxious to try. Man has 
 been termed the child of affliction, an affiliation of which the 
 writer does not recognise the truth ; but for the benefit of 
 those who hold a contrary opinion, he ventures to plagiarise 
 a few stanzas versified from a prose apologue of Dr. 
 Sheridan — 
 
 Affliction one day, as she hark'd to the roar 
 
 Of the stormy and struggling billow, 
 Drew a beautiful form on the sands of the shore, 
 
 With the branch of a weeping willow. 
 
 Jupiter, struck with the noble plan, 
 
 As he roamed on the verge of the ocean, 
 Breathed on the figure, and calling it man, 
 
 Endued it with life and motion. 
 
 A creature so glorious in mind and in frame, 
 
 So stamp'd with each parent's impression, 
 Among them a point of contention became, 
 
 Each claiming the right of possession. 
 
 " He is mine," said Affliction ; "I gave him his birth, 
 
 I alone am his cause of creation." — 
 "The materials were furnished by me," answered Earth — 
 
 " I gave him," said Jove, " animation." 
 
 The gods all assembled in solemn divan, 
 
 After hearing each claimant's petition, 
 Pronounced a definitive verdict on man, 
 
 And thus settled his fate's disposition. 
 
 " Let Affliction possess her own child, till the woes 
 
 Of life cease to harass and goad it ; 
 After death give his body to earth, whence it rose, 
 
 And his spirit to Jove, who bestowed it." 
 
 AGE, Old — an infirmity which nobody knows. Nothing 
 can exceed our early impatience to escape from youth to 
 manhood, and appear older than we are, except our subse- 
 
16 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 quent anxiety to obtain the reputation of being younger than 
 we are. The first longing is natural, for Hope is before us, 
 and it seems possible to anticipate that which we must soon 
 reach ; but the second is a weakness, not less strange than 
 general, for we cannot expect to recover that from which we 
 are perpetually flying, or avoid that to which we are in- 
 cessantly approaching. If by putting back our own date, 
 we could arrest the great clock of time, there would be an 
 intelligible motive for our conduct. Alas ! the time-piece of 
 old Chronos never stops. 
 
 Women, who imagine their influence to depend upon their 
 personal attractions, naturally wish to preserve their youth. 
 It is in their power to do so ; for she who captivates the 
 heart and the understanding, never grows old : and as men 
 are generally estimated by their moral and intellectual, rather 
 than their baptismal recommendations ; as a philosopher of 
 fifty is preferred, by all those whose preference is worth 
 having, to a fool of twenty, there is something very con- 
 temptible in a male horror of senility. So prevalent, how- 
 ever, is the feeling, that, with the exception of one individual, 
 who has obtained an enviable immortality as " middle age 
 Hallam," we have no chronology for men and women at, or 
 beyond the meridian of life. They are all " persons of a 
 certain age," which is the most w^certain one upon record. 
 Complimentary in everything, the French say of a woman 
 thus circumstanced, that she is femme d'un age raisonnable, 
 as if she had gained, in her reasoning faculties, what she had 
 lost in personal charms ; and this, doubtless, ought to be the 
 process with us all. To our mind, as to a preserving green- 
 house, should we transfer, in the winter of life, the attractions 
 of our spring and summer. 
 
 As variety is universally allowed to be pleasing, the 
 diversity occasioned by the progress of age should, in itself, 
 be a source of delight. Perpetual sunshine would soon be 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 17 
 
 found more annoying than an alternation of the seasons ; so 
 would a continuous youth be more irksome than the gradual 
 approach of old age. Existence may be compared to a 
 drum, which has only one single tone ; but change of time 
 gives it variety and cheerfulness enough. 
 
 The infirmity of falsifying our age is at least as old as 
 Cicero, who, hearing one of his contemporaries attempting 
 to make himself ten years younger than he really was, drily 
 observed — " Then at the time you and I were at school 
 together, you were not born." 
 
 ALCHYMIST.— The true possessor of the philosopher's 
 stone is the miner, whose iron, copper, and tin are always 
 convertible into the more precious metals. Agriculture is 
 the noblest of all alchymy, for it turns earth, and even 
 manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the addi- 
 tional reward of health. Most appropriate was the rebuke 
 of Pope Leo X., who, when a visionary pretended to have 
 discovered the philosopher's stone, and demanded a recom- 
 pence, gave him an empty purse. 
 
 ALCORAN.— In the life of Mahomet, prefixed to Reland's 
 work, " De Religione Mohammedica," is the following pas- 
 sage, allusive to the peculiar tenets of the Moammarites, a 
 famous sect among the Mahometans : — " Suppose," say they, 
 "we should resolve all our faith into the sole text of the 
 Alcoran, the difficulty and uncertainty will still remain, if we 
 consider how many metaphors, allegories, and other figures 
 of speech, — how many obscure, ambiguous, intricate, and 
 mysterious passages are to be met with in this infallible 
 book, — and how different are the opinions, expositions, and 
 interpretations, of the most subtle doctors and learned com- 
 mentators on every one of them. The only sure way, then," 
 add they, " to come to the certain knowledge of the truth, is 
 
i8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 to consult God himself, wait His inspirations, live just and 
 honest lives, be kind and beneficent to all our fellow-creatures, 
 and pity such as differ from us in their opinions about the 
 authority, integrity, and meaning of the Alcoran." — What a 
 contrast does the charitable and Christian-like feeling of 
 these Moammarites afford to some of our own unchristian 
 fanatics, who, setting themselves up for stewards of the 
 mysteries, affix their own meaning — often a very revolting 
 one — to " the letter that killeth f and if we hesitate to 
 receive their interpretations, immediately begin to " deal 
 damnation round the land 1" 
 
 ALDERMAN — a ventri-potential citizen, into whose 
 mediterranean mouth good things are perpetually flowing, 
 although none come out. His shoulders, like some of the 
 civic streets, are " widened at the expense of the corpora- 
 tion." He resembles Wolsey ; not in ranking himself with 
 princes, but in being a man " of an unbounded stomach." A 
 tooth is the only wise thing in his head, and he has nothing 
 particularly good about him, except his digestion, which is 
 an indispensable quality, since he is destined to become 
 great by gormandising, to masticate his way to the Mansion- 
 house, and thus, like a mouse in a cheese, to provide for 
 himself a large dwelling, by continually eating. His talent 
 is in his jaws ; and like a miller, the more he grinds the 
 more he gets. From the quantity he devours, it might be 
 supposed that he had two stomachs, like a cow, were it not 
 manifest that he is no ruminating animal. 
 
 ALMS. — To this word there is no singular, in order to 
 teach us that a solitary act of charity scarcely deserves the 
 name. Nothing is won by one gift. To render our bounties 
 available, they must be in the plural number. It is always 
 wise to be charitable, but it is almost peculiar to my friend 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 19 
 
 L that he is often witty in his bounties. He was about 
 
 to assist with a sum of money a scribbler in distress, when 
 he was reminded that he had on more than one occasion 
 been libelled and maligned by the intended object of his 
 
 bounty. " Pooh," said L , " I have so long known all 
 
 his slanders by heart, that they have quite gone out of my 
 head." 
 
 ALPHABET — twenty-six symbols which represent singly 
 or in combination, all the sounds of all the languages upon 
 earth. By forming letters into words, which are the signs of 
 ideas, we are enabled to embody thought, to render it visible, 
 audible, perpetual, and ubiquitous. Embalmed in writing, 
 the intellect may thus enjoy a species of immortality upon 
 earth, and every man may paint an imperishable portrait of 
 his own mind, immeasurably more instructive and interesting 
 to posterity than those fleeting. likenesses of the face and 
 form entrusted to canvas, or even to bronze and marble. 
 What myriads have passed away, body and mind, leaving 
 not a wreck behind them, while the mental features of some 
 contemporary writer survive in all the freshness and integrity 
 with which they were first traced. Were I a literary painter 
 how often should I be tempted in the pride of my heart, to 
 exclaim with the celebrated artist, " Ed to anche sono 
 Pittore? 
 
 Although the word be derived from the two first letters of 
 the Greek, every alphabet now in use may be traced with 
 historical certainty to one original — the Phenician or Syriac. 
 " Phenicia and Palestine," says Gibbon, " will for ever live 
 in the memory of mankind ; since America, as well as 
 Europe, has received letters from the one and religion from 
 the other." 
 
 One of the earlier French princes being too indolent or 
 too stupid to acquire his alphabet by the ordinary process, 
 
ao THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 twenty-four servants were placed in attendance upon him, 
 each, with a huge letter painted upon his stomach ; as he 
 knew not their names, he was obliged to call them by their 
 letter when he wanted their services, which in due time gave 
 him the requisite degree of literature for the exercise of the 
 royal functions. 
 
 AMBIGUITY — a quality deemed essentially necessary 
 to the clear understanding of diplomatic writings, acts of 
 parliament, and law proceedings. 
 
 AMBITION — a mental dropsy, which keeps continually 
 swelling and increasing, until it kills its victim. Ambition is 
 often overtaken by calamity, because it is not aware of its 
 pursuer and never looks behind. " Deeming naught done 
 while aught remains to do," it is necessarily restless ; unable 
 to bear anything above it, discontent must be its inevitable 
 portion, for even if the pinnacle of worldly power be gained, 
 its occupant will sigh, like Alexander, for another globe to 
 conquer. Every day that brings us some new advancement 
 or success, brings us also a day nearer to death, embittering 
 the reflection, that the more we have gained, the more we 
 have to relinquish. Aspiring to nothing but humility, the 
 wise man will make it the height of his ambition to be un- 
 ambitious. As he cannot effect all that he wishes, he will 
 only wish for that which he can effect. 
 
 AMBLE. — Of this indefinite and intermediate pace, which, 
 (to adopt the Johnsonian style) " without the concussiveness 
 of the trot, or the celerity of the canter, neither contributes 
 to the conservation of health, nor to the economy of time, 
 nothing can be pronounced in eulogy, and little therefore 
 need be said in description." To those elderly gentlemen, 
 nevertheless, who are willing to sacrifice the perilous repu- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 21 
 
 tation of a good seat for the comfort of a safe one ; an 
 ambling nag has always been an equestrian beatitude. Such 
 was the feeling of the Sexagenarian, who took his ( horse to 
 the nienage, that it might be taught the " old gentleman's 
 pace." As the riding-master, after several trials, could not 
 immediately succeed in his object, the owner of the animal 
 petulantly cried out — " Zooks, Sir, do you call this an 
 amble ? " — " No, Sir," was the reply, " I call it a pre- 
 amble." 
 
 ANCESTRY.— 
 
 " They who on length of ancestry enlarge, 
 Produce their debt instead of a discharge." 
 
 They search in the root of the tree for those fruits which the 
 branches ought to produce, and too often resemble potatoes, 
 of which the best part is under ground. Pedigree is the 
 boast of those who have nothing else to vaunt. In what 
 respect, after all, are they superior to the humblest of their 
 neighbours ? Every man's ancestors double at each remove 
 in geometrical proportion, so that after only twenty genera- 
 tions, he has above a million of progenitors. A duke has no 
 more ; a dustman has no less. 
 
 A river generally becomes narrower and more insignifi- 
 cant, as we ascend to its source. The stream of ancestry, on 
 the contrary, often vigorous, pure, and powerful at its foun- 
 tain head, usually becomes more feeble, shallow, and corrupt 
 as it flows downwards. Some of our ancient families, whose 
 origin is lost in the darkness of antiquity, and into whose 
 hungry maws the tide of patronage is for ever flowing, may 
 be compared to the Nile, which has many mouths, and no 
 discoverable head. Nobles sometimes illustrate that name 
 about as much as an Italian Cicerone recalls the idea of 
 Cicero. 
 
 It is a double shame to a man to have derived distinction 
 
22 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 from his predecessors, if he bequeath disgrace to his 
 posterity. 
 
 ' ' Heraldic honours on the base, 
 
 Do but degrade their wearers more, 
 As sweeps, whom May-day trappings grace, 
 Show ten times blacker than before." 
 
 ANCIENTS — dead bones used for the purpose of knock- 
 ing down live flesh. Every puny Samson thinks he may 
 wield his ass's jaw-bone in assaulting his contemporaries, by 
 comparing them with their predecessors. If architects 
 attempt any thing original, they are ridiculed for their pains, 
 and desired to stick to the five orders. This is the sixth 
 order of the public. If artists follow the bent of their own 
 genius, they are tauntingly referred by their new masters to 
 the old masters, and desired not to indulge their own crude 
 capriccios. Authors are schooled and catechized in the same 
 way ; but when either of the three conform to the instructions 
 of their critics, they are instantly and unmercifully assailed 
 as servile imitators, without a single grain of originality. 
 Whether, therefore, they allow the ancients to be imitable or 
 inimitable it is manifest that they only exalt them in order to 
 lower their contemporaries, and that their suffrages would be 
 reversed, if the ancients and moderns were to change places. 
 With a similar jealousy we give a preference to old wine, old 
 books, and an old friend, unless the latter should appear in 
 the form of an old joke, when he is treated with the utmost 
 scorn and contumely. As this is equally reprehensible and 
 inconsistent, I shall endeavour to cure my readers of any 
 such propensity, by habituating them to encounters with 
 some of their old Joe Miller acquaintance. 
 
 ANGER — punishing ourselves for the faults of another; 
 or committing an additional error, if we are incensed at our 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 23 
 
 own mistakes. In either case, wrath may aggravate, but was 
 never known to diminish our annoyance. " I wish," says 
 Seneca, "that anger could always be exhausted, when its first 
 weapon was broken, and that like the bees, who leave their 
 stings in the wound they make, we could only inflict a single 
 injury." To a certain extent this wish is often fulfilled, for 
 the same writer observes, that anger is like a ruin, which, in 
 falling upon its victim, breaks itself to pieces. 
 
 Without any other armour than an offended frown, an in- 
 dignant eye, and a rebuking voice, decrepit age, timid 
 womanhood, the weakest of our species, may daunt the most 
 daring, for there is something formidable in the mere sight 
 of wrath; even where it is incapable of inflicting any chastise- 
 ment upon its provoker. It has thus a preventive operation, 
 by making us cautious of calling it forth, and restrains more 
 effectually by the fear of its ebullitions, than it could by their 
 actual outbreakings ; while it still retains a positive influence 
 when aroused. Anger, in short, is a moral power, which 
 tends to repair the inequalities of physical power, and to 
 approximate the strong and the weak towards the same 
 level. 
 
 So carefully, however, are our constitutional instincts 
 guarded against abuse, that the moral and physical vigour 
 imparted to us by anger as a salutary means of defence, is 
 immediately lessened, when by its intemperate and reckless 
 exercise, we would pervert it into a dangerous instrument of. 
 aggression. Blind and ungovernable rage, approaching to 
 the nature of madness, not only obscures the reason, but 
 often paralyses, for the moment, the bodily energies ; a 
 paroxysm which fortunately serves as a protection both to 
 ourselves and others. This seasonable arrest of our functions 
 gives us time to sanify, and we are allowed to recover them, 
 when their exercise is no longer dangerous. Protective 
 nature makes us sometimes blind and weak, when highly 
 
24 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 excited, for the same reason that the fleet greyhound has no 
 sense of smell, and the quick-scented bloodhound no swift- 
 ness of foot. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth discovered qualities in anger which may 
 not be obvious to common observers. " What does a man 
 think of when he thinks of nothing?" her Majesty demanded 
 of a choleric courtier, to whom she had not realised her 
 promise of promotion. " He thinks, madam, of a woman's 
 promise," was the tart reply. " Well, I must not confute 
 him," said the Queen, walking away, " anger makes men 
 witty, but it keeps them poor." 
 
 ANGLER — a fish-butcher — a piscatory assassin — a Jack 
 Ketch— catcher of jack, an impaler of live worms, frogs, and 
 flies, a torturer of trout, a killer of carp, and a great gudgeon 
 who sacrifices the best part of his life in taking away the life 
 of a little gudgeon. Every thing appertaining to the angler's 
 art, is cowardly, cruel, treacherous, and cat-like. He is a 
 professional dealer in " treasons, stratagems, and plots ; " 
 more subtle and sneaking than a poacher, and more exclu- 
 sively devoted to snares, traps, and subterfuges ; he is at the 
 same time infinitely more remorseless, finding amusement 
 and delight in prolonging, to the last gasp, the agonies of the 
 impaled bait, and of the wretched fish writhing with a barb 
 in its entrails. 
 
 The high priest of the anglers is that demure destroyer, 
 old Izaak Walton, who may be literally termed the Hooker 
 of their piscatory polity. Because he could write a line as 
 well as throw one, they would persuade themselves that he 
 has shed a sort of classical dignity on their art, and even 
 associated it with piety and poetry, — what profanation ! The 
 poet is not only a lover of his species, but of all sentient 
 beings, because he "looks through nature up to Nature's 
 God." But how can an angler be pious ? How can a tor- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 25 
 
 mentor of the creature be a lover of the Creator ? Away 
 with such cant ! Old Izaak must either have been a demure 
 hypocrite, or a blockhead, unaware of the gross inconsistency 
 between his profession and his practice. If he saw a fine 
 trout, and wished to trouble him with a line, just to say he 
 should be very happy to see him to dinner, he must first tor- 
 ture his postman, the bait, and make him carry the letters of 
 Bellerophon. Hark how tenderly the gentle ruffian gives 
 directions for baiting with a frog : " Put your hook through 
 the mouth, and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle 
 and silk, sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, 
 to the arming wire of the hook, and in so doing, use him as 
 though yoic loved him." 
 
 Tender hearted Izaak ! — What would be his treatment of 
 animals whom he did not love ? 
 
 An angler may be meditative, or rather musing, but let 
 him not ever think that he thinks, for if he had the healthy 
 power of reflection, he could not be an angler. If sensible 
 and amiable men are still to be seen squatted for hours in a 
 punt, " like patience on a monument, smiling at grief," they 
 are as much out of their element as the fish in their basket, 
 and could only be reconciled to their employment by a reso- 
 lute blinking of the question. In one of the admirable papers 
 of the " Indicator," Leigh Hunt says — " We really cannot see 
 what equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out of 
 the water by the jaws, merely because it has not the power of 
 making a noise ; for we presume, that the most philosophic 
 of anglers would hardly delight in catching shrieking fish." 
 This is not so clear. Old Izaak, their patriarch, would have 
 probably maintained that the shriek was a cry of pleasure. 
 We willingly leave the anglers to their rod, for they deserve 
 it, and we allow them to defend one another, not only 
 because they have no other advocates, but because we are 
 sure that the rest of the community would be glad to see 
 
26 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 them hang together, especially if they should make use of 
 their own lines. 
 
 Averse as we are from extending the sphere of the angler's 
 cruelty, we will mention one fish which old Izaak himself 
 had never caught. A wealthy tradesman having ordered a 
 fish-pond at his country-house to be cleared out, the foreman 
 discovered, at the bottom, a spring of ferruginous coloured 
 water ; and, on returning to the house, told his employer that 
 they had found a chalybeate. " I am glad of it," exclaimed 
 the worthy citizen, "for I never saw one. Put it in the basket 
 with the other fish, and I'll come and look at it presently." 
 
 ANNUALS, Illustrated— the second childhood of Litera- 
 ture, the patrons of which carefully look over the plates, and 
 studiously overlook the letter-press. Its object is to sub- 
 stitute the visible for the imaginative, a sensual for an intel- 
 lectual pleasure, and to teach us to read engravings instead 
 of writings. 
 
 ANSWERS — to the point are more satisfactory to the 
 interrogator, but answers from the point may be sometimes 
 more entertaining to the auditor. " Were you born in 
 wedlock?" asked a counsel of a witness. "No, Sir, in 
 Devonshire," was the reply. — " Young woman," said a 
 magistrate to a girl who was about to be sworn, " why do 
 you hold the book upside down?" — "I am obliged, Sir, 
 because I am left-handed." — See Josephus Molitor. A 
 written non sequitur, not less amusing, was involved in the 
 postscript of the man who hoped his correspondent would 
 excuse faults of spelling, if any, as he had no knife to mend 
 his pens. 
 
 ANTINOMIANS— an antithesis to the Society for the 
 Suppression of Vice. If we did not know that the best 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 27 
 
 things perverted become the worst, we might wonder that 
 the Christian religion should have ever generated a sect, 
 whose doctrines are professedly anti-moral. Many, how- 
 ever, are still to be found, who, maintaining that the moral 
 law is nothing to man, and that he is not bound to obey 
 it, avow an open contempt for good works, and affirm, that 
 as God sees no sin in believers, they are neither obliged 
 to confess it, nor to pray for its forgiveness. In this most 
 perilous spirit many tracts have been published, 
 
 " Which, in the semblance of devotion, 
 
 Allure their victim to offence, 
 And then administer a potion, 
 
 To soothe and lull his conscience ; 
 Teaching him that to break all ties, 
 May be a wholesome sacrifice ; — 
 That saints, like bowls, may go astray, 
 Better to win the proper way ; 
 Indulge in every sin at times, 
 
 To prove that grace is never lacking ; 
 And purify themselves by crimes, 
 
 As dirty shoes are clean'd by blacking." 
 
 ANTIPATHY. — As most men imagine themselves to have 
 an abundance of good reasons for dislike of their fellow- 
 creatures, they should be careful not to indulge imaginary 
 ones. And yet some people, forgetting the precept of " Fas 
 est et ab hoste docert" have such a blind antipathy against 
 a political opponent, that they will disclaim any opinion 
 which he adopts, and adopt those that he disclaims, which, 
 as Bacon pithily observes, " is to make another man's folly 
 the master of your wisdom." Bentham, in his Book of 
 Fallacies, has ably pointed out the absurdity of this indis- 
 criminate oppugnancy. — " Allow this argument the effect of 
 a conclusive one, you put it into the power of any man to 
 draw you at pleasure from the support of every measure 
 
28 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 which, in your own eyes, is good ; to force you to give your 
 support to any and every measure which, in your own eyes, 
 is bad. Is it good ? — the bad man embraces it, and, by the 
 supposition, you reject it. Is it bad ? — he vituperates it, and 
 that suffices for driving you into its embrace. You split 
 upon the rocks, because he has avoided them ; you miss the 
 harbour, because he has steered into it ! Give yourself up 
 to any such blind antipathy, you are no less in the power of 
 your adversaries than if, by a correspondently irrational 
 sympathy and obsequiousness, you put yourself into the 
 power of your friends." — pp. 132, 133. 
 
 ANTIQUARY— too often a collector of valuables that 
 are worth nothing, and a recollector of all that Time has 
 been glad to forget. His choice specimens have become 
 rarities, simply because they were never worth preserving ; 
 and he attaches present importance to them in exact pro- 
 portion to their former insignificance. A worthy of this 
 unworthy class was once edifying the French Academy with 
 a most unmerciful detail of the comparative prices of com- 
 modities at various remote periods, when La Fontaine 
 observed, " Our friend knows the value of everything, — 
 except time." We recommend this anecdote to the special 
 consideration of ci-devant members of the Roxburgh Club, 
 as well as to the resuscitators of the dead lumber of 
 antiquity. 
 
 ANTIQUITY — the stalking horse on which knaves and 
 bigots invariably mount, when they want to ride over the 
 timid and the credulous. Never do we hear so much solemn 
 palaver about the time-hallowed institutions, and approved 
 wisdom of our ancestors, as when attempts are made to 
 remove some staring monument of their folly. Thus is the 
 youth, nonage, ignorance, and inexperience of the world 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 29 
 
 invested by a strange blunder, which Bacon was the first to 
 indicate, with the reverence due to the present times, which 
 are its true old age. 
 
 Antiquity is the young miscreant, the type of commingled 
 ignorance and tyranny, who massacred prisoners taken in 
 war, sacrificed human beings to idols, burnt them in 
 Smithfield as heretics or witches, believed in astrology, 
 demonology, sorcery, the philosopher's stone, and every 
 exploded folly and enormity ; although his example is still 
 gravely urged as a rule of conduct, and a standing argument 
 against innovation, — that is to say, improvement ! If the seal 
 of time were to be the signet of truth, there is no absurdity, 
 oppression, or falsehood, that might not be received as 
 gospel ; while the Gospel itself would want the more ancient 
 warrant of Paganism. Never was the world so old, and 
 consequently so wise, as it is to-day ; but it will be older, and 
 therefore, still wiser, to-morrow. 
 
 In one generation, the most ancient individual has 
 generally the most experience ; but in a succession of 
 generations, the youngest, or last of them, is the real Methu- 
 selah and Mentor. To this obvious distinction, nothing can 
 blind us but gross stupidity, or the most miserable cant. To 
 plead the authority of the ancients, is to appeal from civilized 
 and enlightened Christians, to fierce, unlettered Pagans ; for 
 no one has decided where this boasted wisdom begins or 
 ends, though all agree that it is of great age. Every elderly 
 man is an ancestor to his former self. Let him compare his 
 boyish notions and feelings with his matured judgment, and 
 he will form a pretty correct notion of the wisdom of our 
 ancestors ; for what the child is to the man, are the past 
 generations to the present. 
 
 Let us learn to distinguish the uses from the abuses of 
 antiquity. Not to know what happened before we were 
 born, is always to remain a child : to know, and blindly to 
 
3 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 adopt that knowledge, as an implicit rule of life, is never to 
 be a man. 
 
 APOLOGY — as great a peacemaker as the word " if." 
 In all cases, it is an excuse rather than an exculpation, and 
 if adroitly managed, may be made to confirm what it seems 
 to recall, and to aggravate the offence which it pretends to 
 extenuate. A man who had accused his neighbour of false- 
 hood, was called on for an apology, which he gave in the 
 following amphibological terms : — " I called you a liar, — it is 
 true. You spoke truth : I have told a lie." 
 
 APPEARANCES, Keeping up — a moral, or, rather, 
 immoral uttering of counterfeit coin. It is astonishing how 
 much human bad money is current in society, bearing the 
 fair impress of ladies and gentlemen. The former, if carefully 
 weighed, will always be found light, or you may presently 
 detect if you ring them, though this is a somewhat perilous 
 experiment. Both may be known by their assuming a more 
 gaudy and showy appearance than their neighbours, as if 
 their characters were brighter, their impressions more per- 
 fect, and their composition more pure, than all others. 
 
 APPETITE — a relish bestowed upon the poorer classes, 
 that they may like what they eat, while it is seldom enjoyed 
 by the rich, because they may eat what they like. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE. — Nothing more completely esta- 
 blishes the absence of any standard of intrinsic or inherent 
 beauty in architecture, than the fact that 1 we may equally 
 admire two styles so totally dissimilar, both in their outlines, 
 proportions, and details, as the Grecian and the Gothic, — an 
 apparent inconsistency which has been accounted for by the 
 plastic power of association. Independently of our impressions 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 
 
 3i 
 
 of the convenience, stability, skill, magnificence, and antiquity 
 connected with the classical structures, they appeal more 
 especially to our imagination, as the handiworks and 
 records of those great nations, for which, even from our 
 boyish days, we have ever felt the deepest reverence. And 
 association can find the identical elements of beauty, dis- 
 similar as they may seem, in the Gothic architecture, where 
 a sense of religious veneration, and all the romantic recol- 
 lections of chivalry, produce the same hallowing and 
 ennobling effect as our classical impressions in the former 
 instance. Alison has further observed, too, that a taste in 
 architecture, when once established, is generally permanent, 
 because the costliness of public edifices, as well as their great 
 durability, prevent their renewal, until they have acquired, in 
 the eyes of succeeding generations, all the sanction of anti- 
 quity, and have rooted themselves in the public mind. This 
 accounts for the long-continued uniformity of style among 
 the ancient Egyptians, and other people of the East, as well 
 as for our own habitual imitation of ancient standards. 
 
 Why we should continue to enslave ourselves to the five 
 orders of Vitruvius, I cannot well see. To the art of the 
 statuary there is a conceivable limit, but that of the architect 
 seems to admit a much wider range, and greater variety, 
 than can be circumscribed within five orders. All structures 
 should be adapted to the climate, and there is, therefore, 
 ftrimd facie evidence that the fitting style for Greece and 
 Asia Minor can scarcely be the proper one for England. A 
 Grecian temple, many of whose ornaments are heathen 
 symbols, is not the best model for a Christian church, which 
 is but a solecism in stone when thus paganized ; nor can I 
 admit the wisdom of our imitating an Italian villa, with its 
 open balconies, and shady colonnades, unless we could, at 
 the same time, import the Italian climate. The five orders 
 are, to architecture, what the thirty-nine articles are to the 
 
3 a THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 church, — they do not ensure uniformity ; — and if they did, it 
 would not be desirable, because they are not adapted to the 
 present state of knowledge, and the wants and feelings of 
 the community. In either instance, this slavery of opinion 
 must eventually yield to the growing freedom of thought. 
 
 Is there any valid reason why the Doric capital should be 
 peculiar to a pillar whose height is precisely eight diameters, 
 the Ionic volute to one of nine, and the Corinthian foliage to 
 one of ten? Custom has assigned these ornaments and 
 proportions, but one can imagine others which would be 
 equally, or, perhaps, more agreeable to an unprejudiced eye. 
 The first columns were undoubtedly trees, which diminished 
 as they ascended. The stems of the branches, where they 
 were cut off, suggested the capital ; the iron or other ban- 
 dages at top and bottom, to prevent the splitting of the wood, 
 were the origin of the fillets ; the square tile which protected 
 the lower end from the wet, gave rise to the plinth. But 
 why should a stone pillar be made to imitate a tree, by 
 lessening as it rises ? Custom alone has reconciled us to an 
 unmeaning deviation, which throws all the inter-columnar 
 spaces out of the perpendicular, and presents us with a series 
 of long inverted cones, the most ungraceful of all forms. As 
 if sensible of this defect, the Egyptians made the outline of 
 some of their temples conform to the diminution of the 
 columns, rendering the whole structure slightly pyramidical, 
 and thus preserving the consistency of its lines. 
 
 Observing some singular pilasters at Harrogate, sur- 
 mounted with the Cornua Ammonis, I ventured to ask the 
 builder to what order they belonged. " Why, Sir," he replied, 
 putting his hand to his head, " the horns are a little order of 
 my own." Knowing him to be a .married man, I concluded 
 he had good reason for appropriating that peculiar ornament 
 to himself, and made no further objections to his archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 : 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 33 
 
 The bow windows and balconies that scallop the narrow 
 side streets at our watering-places, in order that their occu- 
 pants may have a better opportunity of seeing nothing, are 
 excrescences which ought to be cut away. I admit, however, 
 the disinterestedness of the architect ; he can have no view 
 in them. 
 
 ARGUMENT — with fools, passion, vociferation, or 
 violence : with ministers, a majority: with kings, the sword: 
 with fanatics, denunciation : with men of sense, a sound 
 reason. 
 
 ARISTOCRACY.— In ancient Greece this word signified 
 the government of the best ; but in modern England, if we 
 are to judge by the present majority of the House of Lords, 
 the term seems to have fairly " turned its back upon itself," 
 and to have become the antithesis to its original import ; 
 even as beldam (or belle dame), formerly expressive of female 
 beauty, is now defined by Dr. Johnson as, " a term of con- 
 tempt, marking the last degree of old age with all its faults 
 and miseries." 
 
 If we have noblemen whose titles are their honour, we 
 have others who are an honour to their titles. Happy he, 
 who deriving his patent from nature, as well as from his 
 sovereign, may be dubbed, " inter doctos nobilismnus, — inter 
 nobiles doctissimus, — inter utrosque ofttimus" 
 
 ARITHMETIC. — The science of figures cuts but a poor 
 figure in its origin, the term calculation being derived from 
 the calculus or pebble used as a counter by the Romans, 
 whose numerals, stolen from the ancient Etruscans, and still 
 to be traced on the monuments of that people, seem to have 
 been suggested in the first instance by the five fingers. In- 
 deed, the term digit or finger, applied to any single number, 
 
 D 
 
34 THE TIN TRUMPET- 
 
 sufficiently indicates the primitive mode of counting. The 
 Roman V is a rude outline of the five fingers, or of the out- 
 spread hand, narrowing to the wrist ; while the X is a symbol 
 of the two fives or two hands crossed. In all probability the 
 earliest numerals did not exceed five, which was repeated, 
 with additions, for the higher numbers; and it is a remark- 
 able coincidence that to express six, seven, eight, the North 
 American Indians repeat the five, with the addition of one, 
 two, three, on the same plan as the Roman VI, VII, VIII. 
 Our term eleven is derived from the word ein or one, and the 
 old verb liben, to leave ; so that it signifies one, leave ten. 
 Twelve means two, after reckoning or laying aside ten ; and 
 our termination of ty, in the words twenty, thirty, &c, comes 
 from the Anglo-Saxon teg, to draw ; so that twenty, or 
 twainty, signifies two drawings, or that the fingers have been 
 twice counted over, and the hands twice closed. 
 
 From the hands also, or other parts of the human body, 
 were derived the original rude measurements. The uncia, or 
 inch, was the first joint of the thumb, which being repeated 
 three times, gave the breadth of the hand ; and this product, 
 quadrupled, furnished the measure of the foot. The passus, or 
 pace, was the interval between two steps, reckoned at six 
 feet ; and a mile, as the word imports, consisted of a thou- 
 sand paces. Other portions of the human body furnished 
 secondary measures ; the width of the hand gave the palm, 
 reckoned at three inches : — the distances of the elbow from 
 the tips of the fingers, the cubit ; the entire length of the 
 arm, the yard; — and the extreme breadth of the extended 
 arms, across the shoulders, the fathom or six feet. 
 
 The Arabic numerals, derived, in all probability, from the 
 Persians, and brought into Europe by the Moors, were a 
 great improvement upon the clumsy system of the Romans ; 
 but it is to be regretted that we have not adopted the duo- 
 decimal in preference to the decimal scale, as it mounts 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 35 
 
 faster, and being more often divisible in the descending 
 series, would express fractions with a greater simplicity. 
 
 ART — Man's nature. Of all cants defend me from that 
 cant of Art which substitutes a blind and indiscriminate 
 reverence of the painter, provided he be dead, for a judicious 
 admiration of his paintings. Our connoisseurs reverse the 
 old adage, and prefer a dead dog to a living lion. They are 
 Antinomian in their critical creed ; they substitute faith for 
 good works, and will fall prostrate before any daub provided 
 it be sanctified by a popular name. 
 
 It may be objected that no artist would have acquired a 
 great name unless he had been a great painter ; a position to 
 which there are exceptions, although we will grant it for the 
 sake of argument. But an artist who might command uni- 
 versal admiration in the olden times, is no necessary model 
 for the present. Surely our portrait painters need not study- 
 Holbein. Many of the old masters, avowedly deficient in 
 drawing and composition, were celebrated for their colouring, 
 a merit which the mere effects of time, in the course of three 
 or four centuries, must inevitably destroy : and yet Titian, 
 the great colourist of his day, but whose pictures have mostly 
 faded into a cold dimness, is still held up to admiration, be- 
 cause his bright and blended hues delighted the good folks 
 of the fifteenth century. The pictures of Rubens preserve 
 the richness of their broad tints, which we can admire with- 
 out being blind to the vulgarity of his taste and his bad 
 drawing, for his females are little better than so many Dutch 
 Vrowes — coarse, flabby and clownish. To a genuine con- 
 noisseur, however, every one of them is, doubtless, a Venus 
 de Medici ; not because she is handsome or well-pro- 
 portioned, for she is neither, but because she is painted by 
 Rubens. 
 
 This idolatry of the artist and indifference to art, has had 
 
 d 2 
 
36 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 a very mischievous effect in England ; first, by withdrawing 
 encouragement from our countrymen and contemporaries, 
 and, secondly, by injuring their taste in holding up as models 
 for imitation, not the paintings of nature, but old Continental 
 pictures, which, even supposing them to be genuine, have 
 often lost the sole distinction that once conferred a value 
 upon them. But in many instances they are spurious, for 
 the high prices which we so absurdly lavish upon them, have 
 called into existence, in the chief Italian towns, manufactories 
 of copies and counterfeits for the sole supply of England, in 
 which happy and discerning country may be found ten times 
 more pictures of each of the old masters, than could have 
 been painted in a long life. Neither the most experienced 
 artist, nor knowing virtuoso, can guard against this species 
 of imposition. It is well known that Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 even in that branch of the art with which he was most con- 
 versant, was perpetually deceived, his collection swarming 
 with false Correggios, Titians, and Michael Angelos. What 
 wonder, then, that an old picture, as often happens, shall sell 
 to-day for a thousand pounds, and that to-morrow, stripped 
 of its supposed authenticity, stat nominis umbra, and shall 
 not fetch ten ? And yet it is as good and as bad one day as 
 it was the other, viewed as a work of art. So besotting is the 
 magic of a name. 
 
 To these pseudo-connoisseurs, who bring their own narrow 
 professional feelings to the appreciation of a work of art, we 
 recommend the following authentic anecdote : — A thriving 
 tailor, anxious to transmit his features to posterity, inquired 
 of a young artist what were his terms for a half length. " I 
 charge twenty-five guineas for a head," was the reply. The 
 portrait was painted and approved, when the knight of the 
 thimble, taking out his purse, demanded how much he was to 
 pay. " I told you before that my charge for a head was 
 twenty-five guineas." — " I am aware of that," said Snip ; 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 37 
 
 " but how much more for the coat ? — it is the best part of the 
 picture." 
 
 ART, Origin of. — We are struck with an admiration almost 
 amounting to awe, when we contemplate a noble building, a 
 fine statue, or a grand painting, and feel a pride in our spe- 
 cies when we term them the noblest productions of human 
 art ; but such objects have a still more sanctifying effect if 
 we suffer them to raise our thoughts to Him who made the 
 artist, and benevolently endowed him with faculties of which 
 the exercise can bestow such pure delight, not only on his 
 contemporaries, but on a long succession of generations. 
 The races of spectators who have been gratified by the beau- 
 tiful products of Grecian art, form, perhaps, but a tithe of 
 those who are to succeed to the same pleasure, for cele- 
 brated statues are almost immortal — they can only perish 
 at least with the civilization that has enshrined them. 
 The humblest work of nature, as well as the most perfect 
 one of art, are alike exalted by tracing them to their divine 
 original. 
 
 ARTICLES, The Thirty-nine — spiritual canons, drawn 
 up with the most subtle complication for the purpose of es- 
 tablishing a general simplicity and unity in matters of faith. 
 Of these Polyglot persuaders to the use of one religious 
 language, there were originally forty-two, composed in the 
 year 1552, "by the bishops and other learned and good men 
 in Convocation, to root out the discord of opinions, and 
 establish the agreement of true religion." But it appears 
 that these infallible bishops and other learned and good men, 
 who had undertaken to fix and determine the only right road 
 to heaven, were themselves but blind guides, for, in the year 
 1562, their Confession of Faith was altered and reduced to' 
 thirty-nine articles. Alas ! this Convocation was no more 
 
5 3 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 infallible than its predecessor, for in 1571 these Articles 
 were again revised and altered, since which time they have 
 continued to be the criterion of the faith of the Church of 
 England. They profess for their object—" the avoiding of 
 diversities of opinions, and the establishing of consent touch- 
 ing true religion," and their eminent success is attested by 
 the fact that, if we include Ireland, Scotland, and the various 
 dissenters, both from Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism, 
 little more than one-third of the inhabitants of Great Britain 
 are calculated to belong to the Established religion ; while, 
 even of that third, owing to different interpretations of these 
 articles, framed for producing universal consent, there are 
 various sects opposed to one another within the walls of the 
 Church, not less zealously than to the common enemy 
 without ! 
 
 Mark the opinion upon this subject entertained by a dis- 
 tinguished prelate. " I reduced the study of divinity," says 
 Bishop Watson, " into as narrow a compass as possible, for 
 I determined to study nothing but my Bible, being much un- 
 concerned about the opinions of councils, fathers, churches, 
 bishops, and other men, as little inspired as myself. I had 
 no prejudice against, no predilection for the Church of Engr 
 land ; but a sincere regard for the Church of Christ, and an 
 insuperable objection to every degree of dogmatical intoler- 
 ance. I never troubled my self with answering any arguments 
 which the opponents in the divinity-schools brought against 
 the Articles of the Church, nor ever admitted their authority 
 as decisive of a difficulty ; but I used, on such occasions, to 
 say to them, holding the New Testament in my hand, l En 
 sacrum codiceml 1 Here is the fountain of truth; why do 
 you follow the streams derived from it by the sophistry, 
 or polluted by the passions of man ? If you can bring 
 any proofs against any thing delivered in this book, I 
 shall think it my duty to reply to you. Articles of churches 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 39 
 
 are not of divine authority; have done with them, for 
 they may be true, they may be false, and appeal to the 
 book itself." 
 
 No Christian Church ought to exact from its ministers a 
 Confession of Faith upon numerous and intricate articles of 
 human construction, though it may fairly claim a declaration 
 of belief that the Scriptures contain a revelation of the divine 
 will. Such, at least, was the opinion of Bishop Watson, as 
 it had been previously professed by the celebrated Bishop 
 Hoadly, and other distinguished members of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 Xerxes, we are told, ordered the non-conforming waves of 
 the ocean to be scourged with rods and confined within 
 certain boundaries ; in imitation of which sapient example, 
 our Church has provided a cat-o'-thirty-nine-tails, to lash 
 back the tide of human thought and circumscribe the illimit- 
 able range of opinion. In both instances the success has 
 been worthy of the attempt. 
 
 ASCETIC. — Dr. Johnson has observed that the shortness 
 of life has afforded as many arguments to the voluptuary as 
 to the moralist, and there can be no doubt that the ascetic, 
 in his cell, is seeking his own happiness with as much 
 selfishness as the professed epicurean : one betakes himself 
 to immediate, the other to remote gratifications ; one devotes 
 himself to sensuality, the other to mortification ; one to 
 bodily, the other, perhaps, to intellectual pleasures ; one to 
 this world, the other to the next ; but the principle of action 
 is the same in both parties, and the ascetic is, perhaps, 
 the most selfish calculator of the two, inasmuch as the 
 reward he claims is infinitely greater and of longer endur- 
 ance. He is usurious in his dealings with heaven, and does 
 not put out the smallest mortification except upon the 
 most enormous interest. His very self-denial is selfish, for 
 
40 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the odds are incalculably in favour of the man who bets 
 body against soul. 
 
 They who impiously imagine that the happiness of the 
 Creator consists in the unhappiness of the creature, are 
 thus offending Him in their very fear of giving offence, 
 since they find sweetness even in their sourness, and a joy 
 in the very want of it. Well for them, too, if they go not 
 astray, in their over anxiety to walk straight. " As for those 
 that will not take lawful pleasures," says old Fuller, " I am 
 afraid they will take unlawful pleasure, and, by lacing them- 
 selves too hard, grow awry on one side." 
 
 To the same purport we may quote the observation of 
 the French writer, Balzac : " Si ceux qui sont ennemis des 
 divertissemens honnetes avoient la direction du monde. Us 
 voudroient 6ter le ftrintemps et la jeunesse, — Pun de Panne'e, 
 et Vautre de la vie." 
 
 ATHANASIAN CREED, Character of, by a bishop.— 
 " A motley monster of bigotry and superstition, a scarecrow 
 of shreds and patches, dressed up of old by philosophers 
 and popes, to amuse the speculative and to affright the 
 ignorant; now a butt of scorn, against which every un- 
 fledged witling of the age essays his wanton efforts, and 
 before he has learned his catechism, is fixed an infidel 
 for life."* 
 
 In Bishop Watson's proposed bill for revising the Liturgy 
 and Articles, the omission of the Athanasian Creed was one 
 of the principal improvements ; and, long before his time, 
 Bishop Burnet had not scrupled to pronounce it a forgery 
 of the eighth century. We know, from the authority of Dr. 
 Heberden, that the pious George III. refused, in the most 
 pointed manner, to make the responses when this creed was 
 
 * Misc. Tracts, by Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, v. ii., p. 49. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 42 
 
 read in Windsor Chapel. Dr. Mant, quoting from Dean 
 Vincent, says, " this creed is supposed to have been framed 
 from the writings of Athanasius. It was not, however, ad- 
 mitted into the offices of the Roman church, at the earliest, 
 till the year 930, in which it has continued ever since, and 
 was received into our liturgy at the time of the Reforma- 
 tion." — (Mant's Common Prayer, p. 57.) 
 
 In spite of the damnatory clauses at the conclusion of 
 this theological puzzle, this Ignotum per ignotius, it appears 
 that Christendom did very well without it for 900 years ; 
 and, probably, very few of the rationally devout would com- 
 plain if it were placed in the same situation for 900 years 
 to come. It was a saying of the Dutch General, Wurtz, 
 " that when men shall have once taken out of Christianity 
 all that they have foisted into it, there will be but one 
 religion in the world, and that equally plain in doctrine, 
 and pure in morals." The Scriptures warn us against 
 " teaching the doctrines of men as the commandments of 
 God ;" or, as Paley has said, " imposing, under the name of 
 revealed religion, doctrines which men cannot believe, or 
 will not examine." When objections are made to the Mosaic 
 account of the creation, as being inconsistent with the 
 modern state of science, it is indignantly urged that Moses 
 did not undertake to expound astronomy or geology to 
 ignorant shepherds, but that he spoke popularly, and 
 adapted himself to the comprehensions of his auditors. 
 And yet, when any attempt is made to popularize our 
 liturgy, by the omission of any such objectionable portions 
 as the Athanasian Creed, we hear a Pharisaical cry of 
 impiety and profanation, and are solemnly warned that to 
 remove a single stone, however cankered or superfluous, 
 is to endanger the whole edifice of the church. Strange ! 
 that we may suppress truth and yet not expunge a forgery. 
 Strange ! that we may adapt the liturgy and formularies 
 
42 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of religion to the ignorance of the age, and yet not adjust 
 them to its knowledge ! 
 
 This incredible creed, which it is above all things neces- 
 sary to hold, may be defined, like Aristotle's Materia Prima, 
 as, " nee quid, nee quale, nee quantum, nee aliquid eorum de 
 quibits Ens denominatur? Nevertheless, there are golden 
 reasons, which may induce a profession of belief in it. Mr. 
 Patten, a curate of Whitstable, was so much averse to it 
 that he always omitted it from the service. Archbishop 
 Seeker, being informed of his recusancy, sent the arch- 
 deacon to ask him his reason. " I do not believe it," said 
 the priest. — " But your metropolitan does" replied the 
 archdeacon. — " It may be so," rejoined Mr. Patten ; " and he 
 can well afford it. He believes at the rate of seven thousand 
 a-year, and I, only at that of fifty." 
 
 ATHEIST. — Supposing such an anomaly to exist, an 
 atheist must be the most miserable of beings. The idea 
 of a fatherless world, swinging by some blind law of chance, 
 which may every moment expose it to destruction, through 
 • an infinite space, filled, perhaps, with nothing but suffering 
 and wretchedness, unalleviated by the prospect of a future 
 and a happier state, must be almost intolerable to a man 
 who has a single spark of benevolence in his bosom. " All 
 the splendour of the highest prosperity," says Adam Smith, 
 " can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful an 
 idea must necessarily overshadow the imagination ; nor in a 
 wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most 
 afflicting adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily 
 springs from the habitual and thorough conviction of the 
 truth of the contrary system." 
 
 The word atheist has done yeoman's service as a nick- 
 name wherewith to pelt all those who disapprove of the 
 thirty-nine articles, or who venture to surmise that there are 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 43 
 
 abuses in the church which need reform ; but this sort of 
 dirt has been thrown until it will no longer stick, except to 
 the fingers of those who handle it. The real atheist is the 
 Mammonite, who, making " godliness a great gain," wor- 
 ships a golden calf, and calls it a God : or the miserable 
 fanatic, who, endowing the phantom of his own folly and 
 fear, with the worst passions of the worst men, dethrones the 
 deity to set up a daemon, and curses all those who will not 
 curse themselves by joining in his idolatry. 
 
 AUDIENCE — a crowd of people in a large theatre, so 
 called because they cannot hear. The actors speak to them 
 with their hands and feet, and the spectators listen with 
 their eyes. 
 
 AUTHOR, Original — one who copying only from the 
 works of the great Author of the world, never plagiarises, 
 except from the book of nature; whereas the imitator de- 
 rives his inspiration from the writings of his fellow-men, and 
 has no thought except as to the best mode of purloining the 
 thoughts of others. Authors are lamps, exhausting them- 
 selves to give light to others ; or rather may they be com- 
 pared to industrious bees, not because they are armed with 
 a sting, but because they gather honey from every flower, 
 only that their hive may be plundered when their toil is 
 completed. By the iniquitous law of copyright, an author's 
 property in the offspring of his own intellect, is wrested from 
 him at the end of a few years ; previously to which period, 
 the bookseller is generally obliging enough to ease him of 
 the greater portion of the profit. 
 
 Against the former injustice, however, most writers secure 
 themselves by the evanescent nature of their works ; and as 
 to the latter, we must confess after all, that the bookseller is 
 the best Maecenas. 
 
44 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 For the flattery lavished upon a first successful work, an 
 author often pays dearly by the abuse poured upon its suc- 
 cessors ; for we all measure ourselves by our best produc- 
 tion, and others by their worst. — Writers are too often 
 treated by the public, as crimps serve recruits, — made drunk 
 at first, only that they may be safely rattaned all the rest of 
 their lives. 
 
 An author is more annoyed by abuse than gratified by 
 praise ; because, he looks upon the latter as a right and the 
 former as a wrong. And this opens a wider question as to 
 the constitution of our nature, both moral and physical, 
 which is susceptible of pain in a much greater and more 
 intense degree than of pleasure. We have no bodily 
 enjoyment to counterbalance the agony of an acute tooth- 
 ache ; nor any mental one that can form a set-off against 
 despair. Nowhere is this more glaringly illustrated than 
 in the descriptions of our future rewards and punishments, 
 the miseries and the anguish of hell being abundantly de- 
 finite and intelligible, while the heavenly beatitudes are 
 dimly shadowed forth, as being beyond the imagination of 
 man to conceive. 
 
 An author's living purgatory, is his liability to be con- 
 sulted as to the productions of literary amateurs, both male 
 and female. The annoyance of reading them can only be 
 equalled by that of pronouncing upon their merits. Oh, that 
 every scribbler would recollect the dictum of Dr. Johnson 
 upon this subject. "You must consider beforehand, that 
 such effusions may be bad as well as good ; and nobody has 
 a right to put another under such a difficulty, that he must 
 either hurt the person by telling the truth, or hurt himself by 
 telling what is not true." 
 
 Between authors and artists there should be no jealousy, 
 for their pursuits are congenial ; one paints with a pen, the 
 other writes with a brush ; and yet it is difficult for either to 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 45 
 
 be quite impartial, in weighing the merits of their different 
 avocations. The author of the Pleasures of Hope, being at 
 a dinner-party with Mr. Turner, R.A., whose enthusiasm for 
 his art led him to speak of it and of its professors as superior 
 to all others, the bard rose, and after alluding with a mock 
 gravity, to his friend's skill in varnishing painters as well as 
 paintings, proposed the health of Mr. Turner, and the 
 worshipful company of Painters and Glaziers. This, (to 
 use the newspaper phrase) called up Mr. Turner, who with 
 a similar solemnity, expressed his sense of the honour he 
 had received, made some good humoured allusions to blotters 
 of foolscap, whose works are appropriately bound in calf; 
 and concluded by proposing in return, the health of Mr. 
 Campbell, and the worshipful company of Paper-stainers — a 
 rejoinder that excited a general laugh, in which none joined 
 more heartily than the poet himself. 
 
 AUTHORITY, Submission to, in matters of opinion — 
 making names the measure of facts, — deciding upon truth 
 by extrinsic testimony, not intrinsic evidence — surrendering 
 our reason, which is the revelation of God, to the reasons of 
 men, not necessarily more competent to judge than ourselves. 
 Better to be a slave with an unfettered mind, than a pseudo 
 freeman whose opinions, his most precious birthright, are 
 bondslaves to a name. Had authority always been our 
 guide, we should still have been savages. " The woods," 
 says Locke, " are fitter to give rules than cities, where those 
 that call themselves civil and rational, go out of their way 
 by the authority of example." Are we to follow every Will- 
 o'-the-wisp because it is literally a precedent ? 
 
 Although it condemns the same assumption in the Pope, 
 our Church in its twentieth article, claims " power to decree 
 rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith." 
 It has been affirmed that this article has neither the sanction 
 
4 6 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of parliament nor convocation ; but if it possessed both, it 
 would still want the authority of reason and justice, and 
 the possibility of enforcing that which is quite beyond the 
 reach of mortal jurisdiction. Christianity, its own best and 
 surest authority, is only weakened by arbitrary enactments. 
 To a calm inquirer, it must seem marvellous that any fallible 
 man, or council of men, should set themselves up as directors 
 of the consciences of others. 
 
 Surely the time will come when even the stoutest sticklers 
 for compulsory act of parliament faith, becoming convinced 
 of their error, will join in the following prayer of the learned 
 and pious Dr. Chandler — " 'Tis my hearty prayer to the 
 Father of Lights, and the God of Truth, that all human 
 authority in matters of faith, may come to a full end ; and 
 that every one, who hath reason to direct him, and a soul 
 to save, may be his own judge in every thing that concerns 
 his eternal welfare, without any prevailing regard to the 
 dictates of fallible men, or fear of their peevish and impotent 
 censures." 
 
 At present it is to be feared, there are many churchmen, 
 reformed as well as Roman, who hold with Cardinal Perron, 
 when he says, "We must not pretend to convince an Arian 
 of his errors by scripture evidence — we must have recourse to 
 the authority of the Church." That this was not the opinion 
 of our English Bishop Hoadly, will appear from the follow- 
 ing extract : — 
 
 " Authority is the greatest and most irreconcilable enemy 
 to truth and argument that this world ever furnished out. 
 All the sophistry, all the colour of plausibility, all the argu- 
 ment and cunning of the subtlest disputer in the world, 
 may be laid open and turned to the advantage of that 
 very truth, which they designed to hide or to depress : but 
 against authority there is no defence. It was authority 
 which would have prevented all reformation where it is ; 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. - 47 
 
 and which has put a barrier against it wherever it is 
 not." 
 
 AUTO-BIOGRAPHY— drawing a portrait of yourself 
 with a pen and ink, carefully omitting all the bad features 
 that you have, and putting in all the good ones that you have 
 not, so as to ensure an accurate and faithful likeness ! Pub- 
 lishing your own authentic life is telling flattering lies of 
 yourself, in order, if possible, to prevent others from telling 
 disparaging truths. No man's life is complete till he is 
 dead, an auto-biography is therefore a mis-nomer. As such 
 works, however, generally fall still-born from the press, an 
 author may fairly be said to have lost his life, as soon as he 
 is delivered of it, so that this objection is, in fact, removed. 
 
 AUTO DA FE, or act of faith — roasting our fellow 
 creatures alive, for the honour and glory of a God of mercy. 
 The horrors of this diabolical spectacle, which was invari- 
 ably beheld by both sexes and all ages with transports of 
 triumph and delight, should eternally be borne in mind, that 
 we may see to what brutal extremities intolerance will push 
 us, if it be not checked in the very outset. Thanks to the 
 progress of opinion, the inquisition » and its tortures are 
 abolished ; but fanatics, whether Romish or Reformed, still 
 reserve the right of punishing Heretics, (that is, all those 
 who differ from themselves on religious points,) with fire, 
 pillory, imprisonment, and odium in this world ; while they 
 carefully retain the parting curse of the inquisition, " Jam 
 animam tuam tradimus Diabolo? and consign them to 
 eternal fire in the next. This moral inquisition remains yet 
 to be suppressed. It is only a postponed auto da fe. And 
 all this hateful irreligion for the sake of religion ! How truly 
 may Christianity exclaim — " I fear not mine enemies, but 
 save, oh ! save me from my pretended friends." 
 
48 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 AVARICE — the mistake of the old, who begin multi- 
 plying their attachments to the earth, just as they are going 
 to run away from it, thereby increasing the bitterness with- 
 out protracting the date of their separation. What the world 
 terms avarice, however, is sometimes no more than a com- 
 pulsory economy ; and even a wilful penuriousness is better 
 than a wasteful extravagance. Simonides being reproached 
 with parsimony, said he had rather enrich his enemies after 
 his death, than borrow of his friends in his lifetime. 
 
 There are more excuses for this "old gentlemanly vice," 
 than the world is willing to admit. Its professors have the 
 honour of agreeing with Vespasian, that — " Auri bonus est 
 odor ex re qualibet? and with Dr. Johnson, who maintained, 
 that a man is seldom more beneficially employed, either for 
 himself or others, than when he is making money. Wealth, too, 
 is power, of which the secret sense in ourselves, and the open 
 homage it draws from others, are doubly sweet, when we feel 
 that all our other powers, and the estimation they procured 
 us, are gradually failing. Nor is it any trifling advantage, in 
 extreme old age, still to have a pursuit that gives an interest 
 to existence ; still to propose to ourselves an object, of which 
 every passing day advances the accomplishment, and which 
 holds out to us the pleasure of success, with hardly a pos- 
 sibility of failure, for it is much more easy to make the last 
 plum than the first thousand. So far from supposing an old 
 miser to be inevitably miserable, in the Latin sense of the 
 word, it is not improbable that he may be more happy than 
 his less penurious brethren. No one but an old man who 
 has withstood the temptation of avarice, should be allowed 
 to pronounce its unqualified condemnation. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 49 
 
 ACHE LOR — one who is so fearful of marrying, 
 lest his wife should become his mistress, that he 
 not unfrequently finishes his career by convert- 
 ing his mistress into a wife. " A married man," 
 said Dr. Johnson, " has many cares ; but a 
 bachelor has no pleasures." Cutting himself off from a great 
 blessing, for fear of some trifling annoyance, he has rivalled 
 the wiseacre who secured himself against corns, by ampu- 
 tating his leg. In his selfish anxiety to live unencumbered, he 
 has only subjected himself to a heavier burthen ; for the pas- 
 sions, who apportion to every individual the load that he is 
 to bear through life, generally say to the calculating bachelor 
 — " As you are a single man, you shall carry double." 
 
 We may admire the wit, without acknowledging the truth 
 of the repartee uttered by a bachelor, who, when his friend 
 reproached him for his celibacy, adding that bachelorship 
 ought to be taxed by the Government, replied, " There I 
 agree with you, for it is quite a luxury ! " 
 
 BAIT — one animal impaled upon a hook, in order to 
 torture a second, for the amusement of a third. Were the 
 latter to change places, for a single day, with either of the 
 two former, which might generally be done with very little 
 loss to society, it would enable him to form a better notion 
 of the pastime he is in the habit of pursuing. — N.B. To 
 make some approximation towards strict retributive justice, 
 he should gorge the bait, and his tormentor should have all 
 the humanity of an experienced angler ! 
 
 BALLADS — vocal portraits of the national mind. The 
 people that are without them, may literally be said not to be 
 worth an old song. The old Government of France was well 
 
 E 
 
5 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 defined as an absolute monarchy, moderated by songs ; and 
 the acute Fletcher of Saltoun was so sensible of their im- 
 portance, as to express a deliberate opinion, that if a man 
 were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who 
 made the laws of a nation. They who deem this an ex- 
 aggerated notion, will do well to recollect the silly ballad 
 of Lilliburlero, the noble author of which publicly boasted, 
 and without much extravagance in the vaunt, that he had 
 rhymed King James out of his dominions. 
 
 BALLOT — an equal security against aristocratical cor- 
 ruption, and democratical intimidation : the only security 
 for the free and impartial exercise of the elective franchise, 
 to extend which to the poor and dependent, without the 
 protection of secrecy, is only to throw the representation 
 more completely into the hands of the rich and powerful. 
 Sad rogues must be the lower classes, as we are told, thus 
 to be bought or browbeaten. No doubt : and their superiors, 
 who bribe and intimidate them, are all marvellous proper 
 gentlemen ! Against a proposition for the ballot, the esta- 
 blished arguments are, a shrug of the shoulders, a look of 
 disgust, and an exclamation of horror ; — conclusive modes 
 of reasoning, adopted rather from necessity than choice, for 
 we are not aware of any more convincing objections. Some, 
 indeed, are so consistent as to tell us, that the practice is 
 mean, degrading, contemptible, un-English, at the very time 
 that it is openly practised in the Committee business of the 
 House of Commons, in the elections at the East India 
 House, and in those of almost every club throughout the 
 kingdom. Though such noodles have short memories, they 
 cannot be called great wits. 
 
 BANDIT — an unlegalised soldier, who is hanged for 
 doing that which would get him a commission and a medal, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 51 
 
 had he taken the king's money, instead of that of travellers. 
 " Ille crucem sceleris ftretiu7n tulit, hie diademaP 
 
 BAR, Independence of the. — Like a ghost, a thing much 
 talked of, and seldom seem. If a barrister possess any pro- 
 fessional or moral independence, it cannot be worth much, 
 for a few guineas will generally purchase it. It must be con- 
 fessed, that he is singularly independent of all those scruples 
 which operate upon the consciences of other men. Right 
 and wrong, truth or falsehood, morality or profligacy, are all 
 equally indifferent to him. Dealing in law, not justice, his 
 brief is his bible, the ten guineas of his retaining fee are his 
 decalogue : his glory, like that of a cookmaid, consists in 
 wearing a silk gown, and his heaven is in a judge's wig. 
 Head, heart, conscience, body and soul, all are for sale : the 
 forensic bravo stands to be hired by the highest bidder, 
 ready to attack those whom he has just defended, or defend 
 those whom he has just attacked, according to the orders he 
 may receive from his temporary master. Looking to the 
 favour of the judge for favour with their clients, and to the 
 government for professional promotion, barristers have too 
 often been the abject lickspittles of the one, and the supple 
 tools of the other. 
 
 M. de la B , a French gentleman, seems to have 
 
 formed a very correct notion of the independence of the bar. 
 Having invited several friends to dine on a maigre day, his 
 servant brought him word, that there was only a single 
 salmon left in the market, which he had not dared to bring 
 away, because it had been bespoken by a barrister. — " Here," 
 said his master, putting two or three pieces of gold into his 
 hand, " Go back directly, and buy me the barrister and the 
 salmon too." 
 
 BARRISTER — a legal servant of all work: one who 
 
 e 2 
 
52 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 sometimes makes his gown a cloak for browbeating and 
 putting down a witness, who, but for this protection, might 
 occasionally knock down the barrister. Show me the con- 
 scientious counsellor, who, refusing to hire out his talents 
 that he may screen the guilty, overreach the innocent, 
 defraud the orphan, or impoverish the widow, will scrupu- 
 lously decline a brief, unless the cause of his client wear at 
 least a semblance of honesty and justice ; — who will leave 
 knaves and robbers to the merited inflictions of the law, 
 while he will cheerfully exert his eloquence and skill in 
 redressing the wrongs of the injured. Show me such a 
 Phcenix of a barrister, and I will admit that he richly 
 deserves — not to have been at the bar ! 
 
 " Does not a barrister's affected warmth, and habitual dis- 
 simulation, impair his honesty?" asked Boswell of Dr. John- 
 son. — " Is there not some danger that he may put on the 
 same mask in common life, in the intercourse with his 
 friends?" — "Why no, Sir," replied the Doctor. "A man 
 will no more carry the artifice of the bar into the common 
 intercourse of society, than a man who is paid for tumbling 
 upon his hands will continue to do so when he should walk 
 on his feet." Perhaps not ; but how are we to respect the 
 forensic tumbler, who will walk upon his hands, and perform 
 the most ignoble antics for a paltry fee ? 
 
 All briefless barristers will please to consider themselves 
 excepted from the previous censure, for I should be really 
 sorry to speak ill of any man without a cause. 
 
 BATHOS — sinking when you mean to rise. The waxen 
 wings of Icarus, which, instead of making him master of the 
 air, plunged him into the water, were a practical Bathos. So 
 was the miserable imitation of the Thunderer by Salmoneus, 
 which, instead of giving him a place among the Gods, con- 
 signed him to the regions below. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 53 
 
 Of the wiitten Bathos, an amusing instance is afforded in 
 the published tour of a lady, who has attained some celebrity 
 in literature. Describing a storm to which she was exposed, 
 when crossing in the steam-boat from Dover to Calais, her 
 ladyship says, — " In spite of the most earnest solicitations to 
 the contrary, in which the captain eagerly joined, I firmly 
 persisted in remaining upon deck, although the tempest had 
 now increased to such a frightful hurricane, that it was not 
 without great difficulty I could — hold up my parasol ! " 
 
 As a worthy companion to this little morqeau, we copy the 
 following affecting advertisement from a London newspaper : 
 
 — " If this should meet the eye of Emma D , who absented 
 
 herself last Wednesday from her father's house, she is im- 
 plored to return, when she will be received with undiminished 
 affection by her almost heart-broken parents. If nothing 
 can persuade her to listen to their joint appeal— should she 
 be determined to bring their grey hairs with sorrow to the 
 grave — should she never mean to revisit a home where she 
 has passed so many happy years — it is at least expected, if 
 she be not totally lost to all sense of propriety, that she will, 
 without a moment's further delay, — send back the key of the 
 tea-caddy." 
 
 BEAUTY — has been not unaptly, though somewhat 
 vulgarly, defined by T. H. as " all my eye," since it addresses 
 itself solely to that organ, and is intrinsically of little value. 
 From this ephemeral flower are distilled many of the ingre- 
 dients in matrimonial unhappiness. It must be a dangerous 
 gift, both for its possessor and its admirer, if there be any 
 truth in the assertion of M. Gombaud, that beauty " refire- 
 sente les Dieux, et les fait oublier" If its possession, as is 
 too often the case, turns the head, while its loss sours the 
 temper ; if the long regret of its decay outweighs the fleeting 
 pleasure of its bloom, the plain should rather pity than envy 
 
54 THE TIN TRUMPET j 
 
 the handsome. Beauty of countenance, which, being the 
 light of the soul shining through the face, is independent of 
 features or complexion, is the most attractive, as well as the 
 most enduring charm. Nothing but talent and amiability 
 can bestow it, no statue or picture can rival, time itself can- 
 not destroy it. 
 
 Wants are seldom blessings, and yet the want of a common 
 standard of beauty has incalculably widened the sphere of 
 our enjoyment, since all tastes may thus be gratified by the 
 infinite variety of minds, and the endless' diversities in the 
 human form. Father Buffier maintains, that the beauty of 
 every object consists in that form and colour most usual 
 among things of that particular sort to which it belongs. 
 He seems to have thought that there was no inherent beauty 
 in anything except the juste milieu, the happy mean. " The 
 beauty of a nose," says Adam Smith, following out the same 
 idea in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, is the form at which 
 Nature seems to have aimed in all noses, which she seldom 
 hits exactly, but to which all her deviations still bear a 
 strong resemblance. Many copies of an original may all 
 miss it in some respects, yet they will all resemble it more 
 than they resemble one another. So it is with animated 
 forms ; and thus beauty, though, in one sense, exceedingly 
 rare, because few attain the happy mean, is, at the same 
 time, a common quality, because all the deviations have a 
 greater resemblance to this standard than to one another. 
 
 Even this, however, is not a certain criterion, for our esti- 
 mate of beauty, depending mainly upon association, will be 
 influenced by the predominant feeling in the mind of the 
 spectator, whether he be contemplating a woman or a land- 
 scape. Brindley, the civil engineer, considered a straight 
 canal a much more picturesque and pleasing object than a 
 meandering river. " For what purpose," he was asked, " do 
 you apprehend rivers to have been intended ? " — " To feed 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 55 
 
 navigable canals," was the reply. Dr. Johnson maintained, 
 that there was no beauty without utility, but he was not pro- 
 vided with a rejoinder, when the peacock's tail was objected 
 to him. What so beautiful as flowers, and yet we cannot 
 always perceive their utility in the economy of nature. There 
 are belles, to whom the same remark may be applied. 
 
 As the want of exterior generally increases the interior 
 beauty, we should do well to judge of women as of the im- 
 pressions on medals, and pronounce those the most valuable 
 which are the plainest. 
 
 BEER, Small — an undrinkable drink, which if it were 
 set upon a cullender to let the water run out, would leave a 
 
 residuum of- nothing. Of whatever else it may be guilty, 
 
 it is generally innocent of malt and hops. Upon the prin- 
 ciple of lucus a non lucendo, it may be termed liquid bread, 
 and the strength of corn. Small-beer comes into the third 
 category of the honest brewer, who divided his infusions into 
 three classes — strong table, common table, and lamen-table. 
 An illiterate vendor of this commodity wrote over his door at 
 Harrogate, " Bear sold here ! " "He spells the word quite 
 correctly," said T. H., " if he means to apprise us that the 
 article is his own Bruin / " 
 
 BELIEF — an involuntary operation of the mind, which 
 we can no more control, however earnestly we may wish or 
 pray for it, than we can add a cubit to our stature by desiring 
 to be taller. " Belief or disbelief," says Dr. Whitby, " can 
 neither be a virtue nor a crime in any one who uses the best 
 means in his power of being informed. If a proposition is 
 evident, we cannot avoid believing it, and where is the merit 
 or piety of a necessary assent? If it is not evident, we 
 cannot help rejecting it, or doubting of it ; and where is the 
 crime of not performing impossibilities, or not believing what 
 
56 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 does not appear to us to be true ? " Throughout the world 
 belief depends chiefly upon localities, and the accidents of 
 birth. The doctrines instilled into our infant mind are, in 
 almost every instance, retained as they were received — with- 
 out inquiry ; and if such a passive acquiescence deserve the 
 name of an intelligent belief, which may well be questioned, 
 it is manifest that we ourselves have no merit in the process. 
 And yet, gracious Heaven ! what wars, massacres, miseries 
 and martyrdoms, to enforce that which it does not depend 
 upon the human will, either to adopt or to repudiate ! 
 
 Perhaps the world never made a more mischievous mis- 
 take, than by elevating the meritoriousness and the rewards 
 of belief, which is not in our power, above the claims of good 
 works, which depend entirely upon ourselves ; a perversion 
 operating as a premium upon hypocrisy, and a positive dis- 
 couragement to virtue. Whatever desert there may be in 
 mere belief, we share it with the devils, who are said, in the 
 Epistle of James, " to believe and tremble ;" a tolerably con- 
 clusive answer to those who maintain that good works are 
 the inevitable result of faith. 
 
 We will put a case to the sincere bigot. If fifty, or five 
 hundred, or five thousand, of the most learned and clear- 
 sighted men in the kingdom, were solemnly to warn him that 
 his salvation or perdition depended on his believing the sky 
 to be of a bright orange colour, what would be his reply, if 
 he was an honest man ? " Gentlemen, most implicitly do I 
 believe that, to your eyes, the sky is of a bright orange 
 colour ; but, owing to some singularity or defect in the con- 
 struction of my visual organs, a misfortune for which I ought 
 to be pitied rather than hated and anathematized, it has 
 always appeared to me of a mild blue colour; nor can I ever 
 believe, such being the case, that a God of truth and justice, 
 will reward me with eternal happiness for uttering a false- 
 hood : or condemn me to endless torments for avowing that 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 57 
 
 which I most conscientiously believe to be true." Let the 
 bigot, upon questions as to the colour of faith, infinitely more 
 difficult of proof than the hues of visible objects, grant the 
 indulgence he is thus described as claiming; let him do as 
 he would be done by, and he will soon lose the reproach of 
 his name, while enlightened and philanthropic Christianity 
 will gain a convert. But, alas ! it is so much easier to 
 observe certain forms involving no self-denial, or to profess a 
 belief, which may be simply an uninquiring assent, than to 
 practise virtue, that the fanatics will always have numerous 
 followers, who will hate the moralists even as the ancient 
 Pharisees detested the Christians. 
 
 Shaftesbury, in his " Characteristics," has thus defined the 
 different forms of belief : — 
 
 " To believe that everything is governed, or regulated for 
 the best, by a designing Principle or Mind, necessarily good 
 and permanent, is to be a perfect Theist." 
 
 " To believe no 07ie supreme designing Principle or Mind, 
 but rather two, three, or more, (though in their nature good) 
 is to be a Polytheist." 
 
 " To believe the governing mind or minds not absolutely 
 and necessarily good, nor confined to what is best, but 
 capable of acting according to mere will or fancy, is to be a 
 Dsemonist !" 
 
 God forbid ! that anything here set down, should be con- 
 strued into an encouragement of unbelief, when its sole 
 object is the discouragement of unchristian intolerance, by 
 showing the real nature and value of faith. They who per- 
 secute, or even hate their fellow creatures for opinion's-sake, 
 want the power rather than the inclination to restore the 
 inquisition, with all its diabolical cruelties. We are told, in 
 the 7th Psalm, that " the Lord ordaineth his arrows against 
 the persecutors." They who practise, therefore, not those 
 who deprecate persecution, are the real unbelievers. Hacknied 
 
58 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 as is the quotation, we cannot, perhaps, better close this 
 article than with Pope's couplet : — 
 
 " For modes of faith let zealous bigots fight; 
 His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 BENEFICENCE — may exist without benevolence. 
 Arising from a sense of duty, not from sympathy or com- 
 passion, it may be a charity of the hand rather than of the 
 heart. And this, though less amiable, is, perhaps, more 
 certain than the charity of impulse, inasmuch as a principle 
 is better to be depended upon than a feeling. There is an 
 apparent beneficence which has no connection, either with 
 right principle or right feeling, as, when we throw alms to a 
 beggar, not to relieve him of his distress, but ourselves of his 
 importunity or of the pain of beholding him : and there is a 
 charity which is mere selfishness, as when we bestow it for 
 the sole purpose of ostentation. We need not be surprised 
 that certain names should be so pertinaciously blazoned 
 before the public eye in lists of contributors, if we bear in 
 mind that " charity covereth a multitude of sins." 
 
 BENTLEY, Doctor.— In the lately published life of this 
 literary Thraso, the editor has omitted to insert an anecdote 
 which is worth preserving, if it were only for the pun that it 
 embalms. Robert Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, having, 
 as it was generally thought, defeated Bentley in a controversy 
 concerning the authenticity of the letters of Phalaris, the 
 Doctor's pupils drew a caricature of their master, whom the 
 guards of Phalaris were thrusting into his brazen bull, for 
 the purpose of burning him alive, while a label issued from 
 his mouth with the following inscription, " Well, well ! I had 
 rather be roasted than Boyled." 
 
 BIGOT. — Camden relates that when Rollo, Duke of Nor- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 59 
 
 mandy, received Gisla, the daughter of Charles the Foolish, 
 in marriage, he would not submit to kiss Charles's foot ; and 
 when his friends urged him by all means to comply with 
 that ceremony, he made answer in the English tongue — Ne 
 SE BY God — i. e. — Not so by God. Upon which the king 
 and his courtiers deriding him, and corruptly repeating his 
 answer, called him bigot, which was the origin of the term. 
 Though modern bigots resemble their founder in being 
 wedded to the offspring of a foolish parent, viz. their own 
 opinion, they are unlike him in every other particular; for 
 they not only insist upon kissing the foot of some superior 
 authority, the Pope of their own election, but they quarrel 
 with all the world for not following their example. Generally 
 obstinate in proportion as he is wrong, the bigot thinks he 
 best shows his love of God by hatred of his fellow creatures, 
 and his humility by lauding himself and his sect. Vain is 
 the endeavour to argue with men of this stamp — 
 
 For, steel'd by pride from all assaults, 
 They cling the closer to their faults ; 
 And make self-praise supply an ointment 
 For every wound and disappointment, 
 As dogs by their own licking cure 
 Whatever soreness they endure. 
 Minds thus debased by mystic lore, 
 
 Are like the pupils of the eye, 
 Which still contract themselves the more, 
 
 The greater light that you supply. 
 Others by them are prais'd or slander'd, 
 Exactly as they fit their standard, 
 And as an oar, though straight in air, 
 
 Appears in water to be bent, 
 So men and measures, foul or fair, 
 
 View'd through the bigot's element, 
 (Such are the optics of their mind,) 
 They crooked or straightforward find. 
 
 But, ought we not to treat even the most intolerant with 
 
60 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 forbearance? On this subject, hear what Goethe says, when 
 writing of Voss the German Poet. — " If others will rob the 
 poet of this feeling of universal, holy complacency ; if they 
 will set up a peculiar doctrine, an exclusive interpretation, a 
 contracted and contracting principle, — then is his mind 
 moved, even to passion; then does the peaceful man rise 
 up, grasp his weapon, and go forth against errors which he 
 thinks so fearfully pernicious ; against credulity and super- 
 stition ; against phantoms arising out of the obscure depths 
 of nature and of the human mind ; against reason-obscuring, 
 intellect-contracting dogmas ; against decrees and anathemas ; 
 against proclaimers of heresy, priests of Baal, hierarchies, 
 clerical hosts, and against their great common progenitor, 
 the devil himself." 
 
 " Ought we to accede to the apparently fair, but radically 
 false and unfair maxim, which, impudently enough, declares 
 that true toleration must be tolerant, even towards in- 
 tolerance? By no means; intolerance is ever active and 
 stirring, and can only be maintained by intolerant deeds 
 and practices." 
 
 BIRTH, Low — an incitement to high deeds, and the 
 attainment of lofty station. Many of our greatest men have 
 sprung from the humblest origin, as the lark, whose nest is 
 on the ground, soars the nearest to heaven. Narrow circum- 
 stances are the most powerful stimulant to mental expansion, 
 and the early frowns of fortune the best security for her final 
 smiles. A nobleman who painted remarkably well for an 
 amateur, showing one of his pictures to Poussin, the latter 
 exclaimed — " Your lordship only requires a little poverty to 
 make you a complete artist." The conversation turning 
 upon the antiquity of different Italian houses, in the presence 
 of Sextus V. when Pope, he maintained that his was the 
 most illustrious of any, for being half unroofed, the lighfc 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 6s 
 
 entered on all sides, a circumstance to which he attributed 
 his having been enabled to exchange it for the Vatican. 
 
 BISHOP — a Protestant Cardinal. Everything appertain- 
 ing to a bishop tends, unfortunately, to place him in a false 
 position. Disclaiming all intention of irreverence towards 
 those who are Right Reverend by title, we cannot help say- 
 ing, that when we compare their ostensible objects and pro- 
 fessions with their practice, they may be more pertinently 
 defined as solecisms in lawn sleeves, mitred anomalies, and 
 cassocked catachreses. Claiming authority and succession 
 from those apostles who were desired by their heavenly 
 Master to provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass, nor 
 scrip for their journey, the Episcopal Apostle forswears 
 pomps, vanities, and filthy lucre, at the very moment when 
 he is about to revel in their enjoyment. His revenues, ex- 
 ceeding those of learned and laborious judges and prime 
 ministers, may appear enormous ; but they will not be 
 deemed disproportionate, if we reflect that his office, being 
 nearly a sinecure, is remunerated in the inverse ratio of its 
 claims. Scandal, indeed, is thus brought upon the whole 
 priesthood, by the indecent opulence and luxury of one ex- 
 tremity, and the degrading poverty of the other : but it must 
 be confessed that the bishop is not answerable, either for 
 the excess or the deficiency. Before the Reformation, being 
 compelled to celibacy, he shook that supernux to the poor, 
 which he now accumulates for the enrichment of his children. 
 It seems to have been thought, even at the Reformation, by 
 not giving his lordship a title for his wife, that he had no 
 title to one. 
 
 Forgetting Wesley's assertion, that the road to heaven* is 
 too narrow for wheels, and that to ride in a coach here, and 
 go to Paradise hereafter, is too great a happiness for one man, 
 the Bishop, whom St. Peter enjoins to be an "ensample of 
 
62 THE TIN TRUMPET ; 
 
 the flock," lives in a palace with little less than regal pomp; is 
 paraded about in a stately carriage ; and by a singular want 
 of tact which has the air of a mockery, decks his very ser- 
 vants in the purple and fine linen which are condemned in 
 scripture, as the types of a vainglorious and worldly grandeur. 
 More punctual in his attendance at the House of Lords, than 
 in the Lord's House, and oftener seen at the court of the 
 king than in that of the temple, he faileth not to do homage 
 to the monarch, whenever there is prospect of a translation, 
 of which he covets every good one, save that of Enoch. His 
 struggles for divine grace may be very earnest ; but they are 
 less apparent than his anxiety to be made an Archbishop, 
 that so he may receive the worship of' " Your Grace," from 
 the mouths of men. In title he is Right Reverend, but there 
 are many who doubt whether the Episcopal office with all its 
 unseemly state and splendour, be either right or reverend. 
 The Bishop adheres, however, to the Greek origin of his 
 name — he is literally an overlooker of his flock. 
 
 Lycurgus being asked why he had commanded offerings 
 of such little value to be made to the Gods, replied — " In 
 order that we may not cease to honour them. We have 
 pursued a contrary course with our Episcopal Gods, and the 
 honour they receive is too little, precisely because their 
 revenues are too large. Their greatness has made them 
 small, their wealth poor, their power weak, and we hold 
 them cheap in exact proportion as they are dear to us. As 
 if to complete the gross inconsistency between his life and 
 its ostensible objects, the lordly successor of the lowly 
 apostles, abandoning his diocess during a great portion of 
 the year, sits as a peer of parliament, and mixes in all the 
 unholy strife of the political arena. He takes his seat, we 
 are well aware, not in his episcopal capacity, but as a feudal 
 baron : if, however, he sustains two characters, which in- 
 capacitate him from properly discharging the duties of either, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 63 
 
 he must share the odium that may attach to failure in both. 
 If the baron, moreover, should chance to be consigned to a 
 place which is never mentioned to " ears polite," what is to 
 become of the unfortunate Bishop? How must he envy his 
 mitred brother of Sodor and Man ! Having little antiquarian 
 lore, the writer is quite ignorant by what right the Bishops 
 of Gloucester, Peterborough, Oxford, Bristol, and Chester, 
 sit in the House of Lords. They cannot plead usage from 
 time immemorial, for their sees were created by patent of 
 Henry VIII., in which there is no mention of sitting in par- 
 liament ; they cannot plead their temporal baronies, for they 
 do not hold by barony, but in franc almoignej they cannot 
 plead their spiritualities, for the Bishop of Sodor and Man is 
 quite as spiritual as they are, and he has no seat. They 
 may plead their writ of summons, but a curious consequence 
 would follow the allowance of this right ; for a writ of sum- 
 mons and sitting, is allowed on all hands to confer a barony 
 in fee tail, the holder and the heirs of his body become noble 
 in blood, and thus a descendant, male or female, of every 
 clergyman who has ever held any one of these sees, and has 
 sat in parliament, becomes entitled to a peerage. 
 
 " They have reigned, but not by me ; they have become 
 princes, but I know them not." For this, however, we repeat, 
 the present Bishops are not answerable ; they have found, 
 not formed the existing system, and we cannot expect that 
 they should willingly forego its advantages. It is one of 
 those monuments of the " wisdom and Christian humility of 
 our ancestors," which successfully imitate the Athenian altar, 
 erected to the unknown God. Pity it is, nevertheless, that 
 the original and most exorbitant endowment of the episcopal 
 office should have provoked Milton to exclaim, in his Letters 
 on Reformation, — " They are not Bishops ; God and all good 
 men know that they are not, but a tyrannical crew and cor- 
 poration of impostors, that have blinded and abused the 
 
64 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 world so long, under that name. When he steps up into a 
 a chair of pontifical pride, and changes a moderate and ex- 
 emplary house for a misgoverned and haughty palace, 
 spiritual dignity for carnal precedence, and secular office and 
 employment for the high negotiations, of his heavenly em- 
 bassage, then he degrades, then he unbishops himself." 
 
 Far be it from us to insinuate that the present episcopal 
 bench are liable to all the thunderbolts so fiercely fulminated 
 against their predecessors ; but their whole system is in 
 grievous need of amendment, and adaptation to the spirit of 
 the age. The signs of the times are not to be mistaken, the 
 handwriting on the wall is flagrant and patent, and if they 
 will not take the warning and set their house in order by 
 making some slight approximation towards a more equitable 
 division between the dignified drones and the toiling bees ; — 
 if they are determined to illustrate the " Quos Dens vult 
 perdere ftrius dementat" and obstinately refuse to reform the 
 church from within, they may rest assured that it will soon 
 be reformed with a vengeance from without. 
 
 Let it be stated, in justice both to the present bench and 
 the people of England, that if the former are unpopular, it is 
 from a dislike of their anomalous office, with its corruptions 
 and abuses, rather than from any disaffection to themselves 
 and still less to religion. The general learning and piety of 
 their lordships, as well as their private characters, are per- 
 fectly unimpeachable, in spite of the candour of one of their 
 body, who being asked why he had not been more careful to 
 promote merit, in some of his recent appointments, is re- 
 ported to have jocosely replied — " Because merit did not 
 promote me." 
 
 BLIND, The— see— nothing. 
 
 BLOOD — the oil of our life's lamp : — the death signature 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 6 S 
 
 of the destroying angel. Of blood, eight parts in ten consist 
 of pure water, and yet into what an infinite variety of sub- 
 stances is it converted by the inscrutable chemistry of 
 nature ! All the secretions, all the solids of our bodies, life 
 itself, are formed from this mysterious fluid. 
 
 T. H., who, whenever he gets beyond his depth in argu- 
 ment, seeks to make his escape by a miserable pun, was once 
 maintaining that the blood was not originally red, but ac- 
 quired that colour in its progress. — " Pray, Sir," demanded 
 his opponent — " what stage does the blood turn red in ? " — 
 "Why, Sir," replied T. H., — "in the Reading Stage, I 
 presume." 
 
 BLUSHING — a suffusion least seen in those who have 
 the most occasion for it. 
 
 BODY — that portion of our system which receives the 
 chief attention of Messrs. Somebody, Anybody, and Every- 
 body, while Nobody cares for the soul.— Body and mind are 
 harnessed together to perform in concert the journey of life, 
 a duty which they will accomplish pleasantly and safely if 
 the coachman, Judgment, do not drive one faster than the 
 other. If he attempt this, confusion, exhaustion, and disease 
 are sure to ensue. Sensualists are like savages, who cut 
 down the tree to pluck all the fruit at once. Writers and 
 close thinkers, on the contrary, who do not allow themselves 
 sufficient relaxation, and permit the mind to " o'er-inform its 
 tenement of clay," soon entail upon themselves physical or 
 mental disorders, generally both. We are like lamps ; if we 
 wind up the intellectual burner too high, the glass becomes 
 thickened or discoloured with smoke, or it breaks, and the 
 unregulated flame, blown about by every puff of wind, if not 
 extinguished altogether, throws a fitful glare and distorting 
 shadows over the objects that it was intended to illuminate. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 The bow that is the oftenest unbent, will the longest retain 
 its strength and elasticity. 
 
 ' ' Quondam cithara tacentem 
 
 Suscitat musam, neque semper arcum 
 Tendit Apollo." 
 
 BON-MOT — see the present work— passi?n. " Collectors 
 of ana and facetice? says Champfort, " are like children with 
 a large cake before them ; they begin by picking out the 
 plums and tit-bits, and finish by devouring the whole." He 
 might also have compared their works to a snowball, which, 
 in our endeavours to make it larger and larger, takes up the 
 snow first, and then the dirt. 
 
 Sheridan, when shown a single volume, entitled " The 
 Beauties of Shakspeare," read it for some time with apparent 
 satisfaction, and then exclaimed, " This is all very well, but 
 where are the other seven volumes ? " 
 
 BOOK — a thing formerly put aside to be read, and now 
 read to be put aside. The world is, at present, divided into 
 two classes — those who forget to read, and those who read to 
 forget. Bookmaking, which used to be a science, is now a 
 manufacture, with which, as in everything else, the market 
 is so completely overstocked, that our literary operatives 
 if they wish to avoid starving, must eat up one another. 
 They have, for some time, been employed in cutting up 
 each other, as if to prepare for the meal. Alas ! they may, 
 have reason for their feast, without finding it a feast of 
 reason. 
 
 BOOKS, Prohibited. — Attempting to put the sun of reason 
 into a dark lantern, that its mighty blaze may be hidden or 
 revealed, according to the will of some purblind despot. 
 When W. S. R. published his admirable " Letters from the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 67 
 
 North of Italy," they were found so little palatable to the 
 Austrian emperor, that they were prohibited throughout his 
 dominions. This honour the author appreciated as he ought, 
 only regretting that the interdict would prevent his sending 
 copies to some of his Italian friends ; a difficulty, however, 
 which was soon overcome. Cancelling the original title page, 
 he procured a new one to be printed, which ran as follows : — 
 " A Treatise upon Sour Krout, with full directions for its pre- 
 paration, and remarks upon its medicinal properties." On 
 their arrival at the frontiers, the inspector compared the 
 books with the Index Expurgatorius, but as he did not find 
 any imperial anathema against sour krout, they were for- 
 warded without further scrutiny, and safely reached their 
 respective destinations. 
 
 Rabelais said, that all the bad books ought to be bought, 
 because they would not be reprinted ; a hint which has not 
 been thrown away upon our Bibliomanians, who seem to 
 forget that, since the invention of printing, no good book has 
 ever become scarce. 
 
 BOOKSELLER.— There is this difference between the 
 heroes of Paternoster Row, and the Scandinavian warriors 
 in the Hall of Valhalla, — that the former drink their wine 
 out of the skulls of their friends, the authors, whereas the 
 latter quaffed their's out of the skulls of their enemies. In 
 ancient times, the Vates was considered a prophet as well as 
 bard, but now he is barred from his profit, most of which 
 goes to the bookseller, who, in return, generously allows the 
 scribbler to come in for the whole of the critical abuse. It 
 has been invidiously said, that as a bibliopolist lives upon 
 the brains of others, he need not possess any himself. This 
 is a mistake. He has the wit to coin the wit that is supplied 
 to him, and thus proves his intellectual by his golden talents. 
 Many a bookvender rides in his own carriage ; but I do not 
 
 F 2 
 
63 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 know a single professional bookwriter who does not trudge 
 a-foot. " Sic vos non vobis " — the proverb's somewhat 
 musty. — If they take our honey, they cannot quarrel with us 
 if we now and then give them a sting. 
 
 BORE — a brainless, babbling button-holder. A wretch 
 so deficient in tact that he cannot adapt himself to any 
 society, nor perceive that all agree in thinking him disagree- 
 able. Nevertheless, we forgive the man who bores us much 
 more easily than the man who lets us see that we are boring 
 him. Towards the former, we exercise a magnanimous com- 
 passion ; but our wounded self-love cannot tolerate the latter. 
 A newly-elected M.P. lately consulted his friend as to the 
 occasion that he should select for his maiden speech. A 
 very important subject was suggested, when the modest 
 member expressed a fear, that his mind was hardly of suffi- 
 cient calibre to embrace it. " Poh ! poh !" said the friend, — 
 " don't be under any apprehensions about your calibre : de- 
 pend upon it, they will find you bore enough." 
 
 BOROUGHMONGERS— an extinct race of beasts of 
 prey. If, as historians assert, we owe gratitude to King 
 Edgar for having extirpated the wolves from England, and 
 to Henry VIII. for having suppressed the monks, what do 
 we not owe to the Whigs for having delivered us from the 
 borough-mongers, who were, at the same time, both wolves 
 and monks ? 
 
 BREATH — air received into the lungs by many young 
 men of fashion, for the important purposes of smoking a 
 cigar, and whistling a tune. 
 
 BREVITY — the soul of wit, which accounts for the tenuity 
 of the present work ! Into how narrow a compass has Seneca 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 69 
 
 compressed his account of the total destruction of Lyons by 
 fire. — " Inter magnam urbem et nullum nox una interfuit" — 
 between a great city and none, only a single night intervened ! 
 
 BRIEF — the excuse of counsel for an impertinence that 
 is often inexcusable. 
 
 BUFFOON — a professional fool, whereas a wag is an 
 amateur fool. 
 
 BULL. — A copious and amusing book might be made, by 
 collecting the bulls and blunders of all nations, except the 
 Irish, whom we would exclude, upon the principle that deter- 
 mined Martial not to describe the nose of Tongilianus, 
 because " nil firtzter nasum Tongilianus habetP Of the 
 French bulls, there are few better than the following. A 
 Gascon nobleman had been reproaching his son with in- 
 gratitude. " I owe you nothing," said the unfilial young 
 man; "so far from having served me, you have always 
 stood in my way ; for if you had never been born, I should at 
 this moment be the next heir of my rich grandfather." 
 
 Worthy of a place by the side of this Gallic Hibernicism 
 is the niaiserie of Captain Baudin, the Commander of a 
 French expedition of discovery. On opening a box of 
 magnetic needles, they were found to be much rusted, which 
 sensibly impaired their utility. " What else can you ex- 
 pect ? " exclaimed the irritated captain ; — " all the articles 
 provided by Government are shabby beyond description. 
 Had they acted as I could have wished, they would have 
 given us silver instead of steel needles." 
 
 An Irishman may be described as a sort of Minotaur, half 
 man and half bull. " Semibovemque virum, semivirinnque 
 bovem? as Ovid has it. He might run me into a longer 
 essay than Miss Edgeworth's, without exhausting the subject, 
 
7 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 I shall therefore content myself with a single instance 
 of his felicity in this figure of speech. In the exami- 
 nation of a Connaught lad, he was asked his age. — "I 
 am just twenty, your honour ; but I would have been twenty- 
 one, only my mother miscarried the year before I was born." 
 One American bull, and we have done. "Do you snore, 
 Abel Adams ? " inquired a Yankee of his friend. — " No, Seth 
 Jefferson, I do never snore." — " How do you know, Abel ? " — 
 «' Because t'other day I laid awake the whole night on 
 purpose to see ! " 
 
 BURGLARY. — If the burglar who craftily examines a 
 house or a shop, to see how he may best break into it and 
 steal its contents, be a knave, what name should we bestow 
 upon the Old Bailey barrister, who, in the defence of a con- 
 fessed thief, sifts and examines the laws to ascertain where 
 he may best evade or break through them, for the purpose of 
 defrauding justice and of letting loose a felon to renew his 
 depredations upon society? Bentham compares the con- 
 fidence between a criminal and his advocate, to a compact of 
 guilt between two confederated malefactors. 
 
 AGE — an article to the manufacture of which 
 our spinsters would do well to direct their 
 attention, since, according to Voltaire, the 
 reason of so many unhappy marriages is, that 
 young ladies employ their time in making nets 
 instead of cages. Putting the same thought in another 
 form, we might say, that our damsels, in fishing for husbands, 
 rely too much upon their personal and too little on their 
 mental attractions, forgetting that an enticing bait is of little 
 use unless you have a hook, line, and landing-net, that may 
 secure the prey. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 71 
 
 CANDIDATES for Holy Orders — are sometimes persons 
 claiming authority to show their fellow-creatures the way to 
 heaven, because they have been unable to make their own 
 way upon earth. 
 
 Some of the clamourers against the abuses of the church, 
 object that the greatest dunce in our families of distinction, 
 is often selected for the ministry. How unreasonable ! is it 
 not better that the ground should be ploughed by asses, than 
 remain untilled? I cannot, by any means approve the 
 fastidiousness, any more than the bad pun of the Canadian 
 Bishop, who, finding, after examining one of the candidates 
 for holy orders, that he was grossly ignorant, refused to 
 ordain him. " My lord ! " said the disappointed aspirant, 
 " there is no imputation upon my moral character — I have a 
 due sense of religion, and I am a member of the Propagci7ida 
 Society." — " That I can easily believe," replied the Bishop, 
 "for you are a proper goose" 
 
 CANDIDATES for Parliament— self-trumpeters. In 
 reading their addresses to electors, it is amusing to observe 
 how invariably, and how very impartially, each candidate, 
 when describing the sort of representative whom the worthy 
 and enlightened constituents ought to return, draws a 
 •portrait of himself blazoning the little nothings that he has 
 achieved, and, sometimes, like the Pharisee, introducing a 
 fling at his opponent, by thanking heaven that he is not like 
 yonder Publican. For the benefit, of such portrait painters, 
 I will record an apposite anecdote of Mirabeau, premising 
 that his face was deeply indented with the small-pox. 
 Anxious to be put in nomination for the National Assembly, 
 he made a long speech to the voters, minutely pointing out 
 the precise requisites that a proper and efficient member 
 ought to possess, and, of course, drawing as accurate a like- 
 ness as possible of himself. He was answered by Talley- 
 
72 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 rand, who contented himself with the following short speech : 
 " It appears to me, gentlemen, that M. de Mirabeau has 
 omitted to state the most important of all the legislative 
 qualifications, and I will supply his deficiency by impressing 
 upon your attention, that a perfectly unobjectionable member 
 of the Assembly ought, above all things, to be very much 
 marked with the small-pox." Talleyrand got the laugh, 
 which in France always carries the election. 
 
 CANDOUR — in some people maybe compared to barley- 
 sugar drops, in which the acid preponderates over the sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 _ CANT — originally the name of a Cameronian preacher in 
 Scotland, who had attained the faculty of preaching in such 
 a tone and dialect, as to be understood by none but his own 
 congregation. This worthy, however, has been outcanted by 
 his countryman, Irving, whose Babel tongues possessed the 
 superior merit of being unintelligible not only to his flock, 
 but even to himself. 
 
 In the present acceptation of the word, as a synonyme of 
 hypocrisy — as a pharisaical pretension to superior religion 
 and virtue, substituted by those great professors of both, who 
 are generally the least performers of either, cant may be 
 designated the characteristic of modern England. Simu- 
 lation and dissimulation are its constituent elements — the 
 substitution of the form for the spirit, of appearances for 
 realities, of words for things. 
 
 CARE — the tax paid by the higher classes for their 
 privileges and possessions. Often amounting to the full 
 value of the property upon which it is levied, care may be 
 termed the poor-rate of the rich. Like death, care is a 
 sturdy summoner, who will take no denial, and who is no 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 73 
 
 respecter of persons. Nor is the importunate dun a with 
 improved in his manners since the time of Horace, for he 
 beards the great and the powerful in their very palaces, and 
 scares them even in their throne-like beds, while the peasant 
 sleeps undisturbed upon his straw pallet. Under the per- 
 petual influence of these drawbacks and compensations, the 
 inequalities of fortune, if measured by the criterion of enjoy- 
 ment, are rather apparent than real ; for it is difficult to be 
 rich without care, and easy to be happy without wealth. 
 
 CASTLE. — In England every man's cottage is held to be 
 his castle, which he is authorised to defend, even against the 
 assaults of the king ; but it may be doubted whether the same 
 privilege extends to Ireland. — " My client," said an Irish 
 advocate, pleading before Lord Norbury, in an action of tres- 
 pass, " is a poor man — he lives in a hovel, and his miserable 
 dwelling is in a forlorn and dilapidated state ; but, still, thank 
 God ! the labourer's cottage, however ruinous its plight, is his 
 sanctuary and his castle. Yes — the winds may enter it, and 
 the rains may enter it, but the king cannot enter it." — " What ! 
 not the reigning king ? " asked the joke-loving judge. 
 
 CASUISTS, A question for. — Lord Clarendon, speaking 
 of Fletcher of Saltoun, says, " he would willingly have sacri- 
 ficed his life to serve his country, though he would not have 
 committed a base action to save it." Quoere? — Can any 
 action be termed base which has for its object the salvation 
 of our native country ? Was Brutus a murderer or a patriot, 
 when he delivered Rome from the usurper of its liberties by 
 assassinating Caesar ? Is tyrannicide justifiable homicide ? 
 — " Non nobis est tantas componere lites." 
 
 CAT — a domestic quadruped, commonly, but, we believe, 
 erroneously supposed to have nine lives ; whence, we pre- 
 
74 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 sume, a whip, with the same number of lashes, is called a 
 cat-o'-nine tails. Few creatures have more strikingly exhi- 
 bited the caprice and folly of mankind, for the cat, according 
 to times and localities, has been either blindly reverenced or 
 cruelly persecuted. Among the Egyptians it was a capital 
 punishment to kill this animal, which was worshipped in a 
 celebrated temple dedicated to the goddess Bubastis, who is 
 said to have assumed the feline form to avoid Typhon ; a 
 fable, reversed in the fairy tale of the cat metamorphosed 
 into a young lady. The sympathies of the Egyptians seem 
 to have descended to the Arabians, for it is recorded of 
 Mahomet, that when a favourite cat had fallen asleep, on the 
 sleeve of his rich robe, and the call to prayers sounded, he 
 drew his scymetar and cut off the sleeve, rather choosing to 
 spoil his garment, than disturb the slumbers of his four- 
 footed friend. 
 
 In England, on the contrary, owing partly to the super- 
 stitious connection of this animal with witches, and partly to 
 that barbarism which never wants an excuse for cruelty, the 
 unfortunate cat appears to have been always considered a 
 proscribed creature, against one or other of whose nine lives, 
 if it ventured beyond the threshold of its owner's house, 
 every hand might be lifted. 
 
 CATACHRESIS— the abuse of a trope, or an apparent 
 contradiction in terms, as when the law pronounces the acci- 
 dental killing of a woman to be manslaughter. The name of 
 the Serpentine River, which is a straight canal, involves a 
 catachresis, and we often, unconsciously, perpetrate others, in 
 our daily discourse ; as when we talk of wooden tomb-stones, 
 iron mile-stones, glass ink-horns, brass shoeing-horns, &c. 
 
 Every one recollects the fervent hope expressed by the late 
 Lord Castlereagh, that the people of this happy country 
 would never turn their backs upon themselves. This was 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 75 
 
 only a misplaced trope ; but there is, sometimes, among his 
 fellow-countrymen, a confusion of ideas that involves an 
 impossibility. An Irishman's horse fell with him, throwing 
 his rider to some distance, when the animal, in struggling to 
 get up, entangled its hind leg in the stirrup. " Oh, very 
 well, sir," said the dismounted cavalier ; " if you're after 
 getting up on your own back, I see there will be no room 
 for me." 
 
 The following string of Catachreses is versified, with some 
 additions and embellishments, from a sermon of an ignorant 
 field-preacher : — 
 
 Staying his hand, which, like a hammer, 
 
 Had thump'd and bump'd his anvil-book, 
 And waving it to still the clamour, 
 
 The tub-man took a loftier look, 
 And thus, condensing all his powers, 
 Scatter'd his oratorio flowers. — 
 ' ' What ! will ye still, ye heathen flee, 
 
 From sanctity and grace, 
 Until your blind idolatry 
 
 Shall stare ye in the face ? 
 Will ye throw off the mask, and show 
 Thereby the cloven foot below ? — 
 Do— but remember, ye must pay 
 What's due to ye on settling day ! 
 Justice's eye, it stands to sense, 
 
 Can never stomach such transgressions, 
 Nor can the hand of Providence 
 
 Wink at your impious expressions. 
 The infidel thinks vengeance dead, 
 
 And in his fancied safety chuckles, 
 But atheism's Hydra head 
 
 Shall have a rap upon the knuckles ! " 
 
 CELIBACY— a vow by which the priesthood, in some 
 countries, swear to content themselves with the wives of 
 other people. 
 
76 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 CEREMONY — all that is considered necessary by many 
 in religion and friendship. 
 
 CENSORIOUSNESS— judging of others by ourselves. 
 It will invariably be found, that the most censurable are the 
 most censorious ; while those who have the least need of 
 indulgence, are the most indulgent. We should pardon the 
 mistakes of others as freely as if we ourselves were con- 
 stantly committing the same faults, and yet avoid their errors 
 as carefully as if we never forgave them. There is no 
 precept, however, that cannot be evaded. " We are ordered 
 to forgive our enemies but not our friends," cries a quibbler. 
 " We may forgive our own enemies, but not the heretics, who 
 are the enemies of God," said Father Segnerand to Louis 
 XIII. Many people imagine that they are not only con- 
 cealing their own misconduct in this world, but making 
 atonement for it in the next, by visiting the misdeeds of 
 others with a puritanical severity. They may well be impla- 
 cable ! " I should never have preserved my reputation," 
 said Lady B — , " if I had not carefully abstained from visit- 
 ing demireps. I must be strait-laced in the persons of others, 
 because I have been so loose in my own." — " My dear Lady 
 B — ! " exclaimed her sympathising friend, " upon this prin- 
 ciple you ought to retire into a convent ! " 
 
 CHALLENGE — calling upon a man who has hurt your 
 feelings to give you satisfaction by — shooting you through 
 the body. 
 
 CHANCELLOR, The present Lord*— One who throws 
 his own lustre upon that high office, from which all his pre- 
 decessors have borrowed their's. It has been objected to 
 
 * For present, we must now read late. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 77 
 
 Lord Brougham that he is ambitious, and long had his eye 
 upon the Great Seal before he obtained it. So much the 
 better. If nature had not stamped him with her great seal, 
 he would never have obtained that of England. What is it 
 to us that the Chancellor's wig was in his head, long before 
 his head was in the wig ? We know that they fit one another 
 admirably, and that is enough. Lord Brougham has ex- 
 perienced the usual fate of reformers — gross ingratitude ; but 
 what can he expect, when he provokes all by his superiority 
 to all, in virtue as well as talent ? His disinterestedness is a 
 reproach to the sordid, his prudence to the destructives, his 
 determined spirit of reform to the conservatives ; and because 
 he is too independent and lofty to belong to any party, he is 
 outrageously abused by all. This cry confused — " Of owls 
 and monkeys, asses, apes, and dogs," — " full of sound and 
 fury, signifying nothing," obscures his lustre about as much 
 as the baying of wolves, or the cackling of goslings, darkens 
 the moon. If he does not immortalize them by his notice, 
 as Pope did his contemptible detractors, what will posterity 
 know of the serpents and geese who combine to hiss at him? 
 There are savages who, in an eclipse of the sun, endeavour 
 to drive away the interceptor of their light, by the most 
 hideous clamour they can raise. The enemies whom the 
 Chancellor has thrown into the shade, have tried a simi- 
 lar experiment ; but, strange to say, they still remain 
 eclipsed ! 
 
 In my high opinion of Lord Brougham, I have sometimes 
 been too prone to fatigue my friends with his praises ; a ten- 
 dency which, upon one "occasion, elicited a pun bad enough 
 to be recorded. My assertion, that he was the greatest man 
 in England, being warmly contested, I loudly exclaimed,, 
 "Where is there a greater?" — "Here!" said the punch- 
 making T. H., with a look of exquisite simplicity, at the same 
 time holding up a nutmeg grater. 
 
78 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 CHANGE— the only thing that is constant; mutability 
 being an immutable law of the universe. 
 
 " Men change with fortune, manners change with climes, 
 Tenets with books, and principles with times." 
 
 CHARACTER, Individual — a compound from the cha- 
 racters of others. If it be true that one fool makes many, it 
 is not less clear that many fools, or many wise men, make 
 one. The noscitur d socio is universally applicable. Like 
 the chameleon, our mind takes the colour of what surrounds 
 it. However small may be the world of our own familiar 
 coterie, it conceals from us the world without, as the minutest 
 object, held close to the eye, will shut out the sun. Our 
 mental hue depends as completely on the social atmosphere 
 in which we move, as our complexion upon the climate in 
 which we live. 
 
 Nevertheless, it must be admitted that it is sometimes 
 profitable to associate with graceless characters. A repro- 
 bate fellow once laid his worthy associate a bet of five guineas 
 that he could not repeat the creed. It was accepted, and his 
 friend repeated the Lord's prayer. " Confound you ! n cried 
 the former, who imagined that he had been listening to the 
 creed, — " I had no idea you had such a memory. There are 
 your five guineas ! " 
 
 CHARITY — the only thing that we can give away with- 
 out losing it. 
 
 ' ' True charity is truest thrift, 
 More than repaid for every gift, 
 By grateful prayers enroll'd on high. 
 And its own heart's sweet eulogy, 
 Which, like the perfume-giving rose, 
 Possesses still what it bestows." 
 
 Charity covereth a multitude of sins, and the English are 
 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 79 
 
 the most bountiful people upon earth ! The best almsgiving, 
 perhaps, is a liberal expenditure ; for that encourages the 
 industrious, while indiscriminate charity only fosters idlers 
 and impostors. The latter is little better than mere selfish- 
 ness, prompting us to get rid of an uneasy sensation. Some- 
 times, however, we refuse our bounty to a suppliant, because 
 he has hurt our feelings ; while the beggar who has pleased 
 us by making us laugh at his buffoonery, seldom goes unre- 
 warded. Delpini, the clown, applied to the late king, when 
 Prince of Wales, for pecuniary assistance, drawing a lamen- 
 table picture of his destitute state. As he was in the habit 
 of thus importuning his Royal Highness, his suit was re- 
 jected. At last, as he met the Prince coming out of Carlton 
 House, he exclaimed — "Ah, votre altesse ! Ah, mon Prince! 
 if you no assist de pauvre Delpini, I must go to your 
 papa's bench ! " Tickled by the oddity of the phrase, the 
 Prince laughed heartily, and immediately complied with his 
 request. 
 
 CHEERFULNESS—" The best Hymn to the Divinity/ 7 
 according to Addison, and all rational religionists. When 
 we have passed a day of innocent enjoyment; when "our 
 bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne ;" when our gratified 
 and grateful feelings, sympathising with universal nature, 
 make us sensible, as John of Salisbury says, that " Gratior 
 it dies, et soles melius nitent" — we may be assured that we 
 have been performing, however unconsciously, an acceptable 
 act of devotion. Pure religion may generally be measured 
 by the cheerfulness of its professors, and superstition by the 
 gloom of its victims. Ille placet Deo, cui placet Deus. — He 
 to whom God is pleasant, is pleasant to God. 
 
 CHESS — a wooden or ivory allegory. Sir William Jones, 
 who claims the invention of this game for the Hindoos, 
 
80 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 traces the successive corruptions of the original Sanscrit 
 term, through the Persians and Arabs, into scacchi, echess 
 ■ — chess ; which, by a whimsical concurrence of circum- 
 stances, has given birth to the English word check, and 
 even a name to the Exchequer of Great Britain. In 
 passing through Europe, the Oriental forms and names 
 have suffered material change. The ruch, or dromedary, 
 we have corrupted into rook. The bishop was with us 
 formerly an archer, while the French denominated it alfin, 
 andy<?/, which were perversions of the original Eastern term 
 for the elephant. 
 
 The ancient Persian game consisted of the following 
 pieces : — 
 
 i. Schach . . . The King. 
 
 2. Pherz . . . The Vizier, or General. 
 
 3. Phil .... The Elephant. 
 
 4. Aspen Suar . The Horseman. 
 
 5. Ruch .... The Dromedary. 
 
 6. Beydal . . . The Foot-soldiers. 
 
 In process of time, the Persian names were gradually 
 translated into French, or modified by French terminations. 
 Schach was translated into Roy — the King; Pherz, the Vizier, 
 became Fercie — Fierce — Fierge — Vierge; and this last was 
 easily converted into a lady — Dame. The Elephant Phil 
 was altered into Fol or Fou; the Horseman became a 
 Cavalier or Knight, while the Dromedary, Ruch, was con- 
 verted into a Tour, or Tower, probably from being con- 
 founded with the Elephant, which is usually represented as 
 carrying a castle. The foot-soldiers were retained by the 
 name of Pietons, or Pions, whence our Pawns. 
 
 In its westward progress, the game of chess adapted itself 
 to the habits and institutions of the countries that fostered 
 it. The prerogative of the King gradually extended itself, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. El 
 
 until it became unlimited : the agency of the Princes, in lieu 
 of the Queen, who does not exist in the original chess-board, 
 bespeaks forcibly the nature of the oriental customs, which 
 exclude females from all influence and power. In Persia, 
 these Princes were changed into a single Vizier, and for this 
 Vizier the Europeans, with the same gallantry that had 
 prompted the French to add a Queen to the pack of cards, 
 substituted a Queen on the chess-board. 
 
 We record the following anecdote, as a warning to 
 such of our male and married readers as may be in the 
 perilous habit of playing chess with a wife. Ferrand, 
 Count of Flanders, having constantly defeated the Countess 
 at chess, she conceived a hatred against him, which came 
 to such a height, that when the Count was taken prisoner 
 at the battle of Bovines, she suffered him to remain a 
 long time in prison, though she could easily have procured 
 his release. 
 
 CHILD, Spoilt — an unfortunate victim, who proves the 
 weakness of his parents' judgment, much more forcibly than 
 the strength of their affection. Doomed to feel by daily ex- 
 perience, that a blind love is as bad as a clear-sighted hatred, 
 the spoilt child, when he embitters the life of those who have 
 poisoned his, is not so much committing an act of ingrati- 
 tude, as of retributive justice. Is it not natural that he 
 should love those too little, who by loving him too much 
 have proved themselves his worst enemies ? — How can we 
 expect him to be a blessing to us, when we have been a 
 curse to him ? It is the awarded and just punishment of 
 a weak over-indulgence, that the more we fondle a spoilt 
 child, the more completely shall we alienate him, as an 
 arrow flies the farther from us the closer we draw it to our 
 bosom. 
 
 As a gentle hint to others similarly annoyed, we record 
 
 G 
 
8a THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the rebuke of a visitor, to whom a mother expressed her 
 apprehension that he was disturbed by the crying of her 
 spoilt brat. — " Not at all, Madam," was the reply ; "lam 
 always delighted to hear such children cry." — "Indeed ! why 
 so?" — "Because in all well-regulated families, they are im- 
 mediately sent out of the room." 
 
 CHRISTIANITY, Primitive.— " There hath not been 
 discovered in any age," says Lord Bacon, " any philosophy, 
 opinion, religion, law, or discipline, which so greatly exalts 
 the common, and lessens individual, interest as the Christian 
 religion doth." The perpetual denunciations of the rich and 
 the great, the repeated averment that the Lord is no re- 
 specter of persons, the lowly origin of Jesus Christ in His 
 earthly capacity, the selection of his Apostles and chief 
 missionaries from among the labouring poor, or from women, 
 a class which had previously exercised no influence in 
 society, all tend to confirm the assertion of Bacon, and to 
 impart to primitive Christianity a character which, in modern 
 times, would almost be termed radical ; while it forms a most 
 significant contrast to the wealth, splendour, and haughty 
 pride of all those spiritual corporations, which are called 
 Established Churches. 
 
 He that would form a correct notion of primitive Christi- 
 anity, should study the following character of its Founder, as 
 drawn by an eloquent divine : — " Christ in his sympathetic cha- 
 racter, was fairer than the sons of men, therefore full of grace 
 were his lips. His humanity was not, like ours, degenerate, 
 but refined and exalted. God breathed direct into him. Sin 
 had not impaired the delicate and sensitive perceptions of his 
 nature ; had not chilled the fountain of his feelings, nor the 
 warm current of his affections. Prompt to feel the woes of 
 others, the sympathetic strings of his heart, constantly at- 
 tuned and tremulously sensitive, vibrated at every sigh of the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 83 
 
 sorrowful spirit, and responded full and deep to every sound 
 of human woe. He identified himself with disgrace and 
 sorrow, and even with sin. He sympathised with the suf- 
 ferers in his humanity, before he exerted the power of his 
 divinity for their relief." 
 
 CHRISTIANITY, Fashionable— keeping a pew at some 
 genteel church or chapel, to which ladies pay a civil visit 
 when the weather is fine, when they have got a new bonnet 
 or pelisse to display, and a smart livery servant to follow 
 them with a prayer-book. They curtsey very low at the 
 mention of the Lord's name, making the homage of the 
 knees a substitute for that of the heart ; and duly receive 
 the sacrament, which, by a strange perversion of ideas, they 
 look upon as a proof of the sincerity of their belief, and an 
 absolution for the laxity of their practice. 
 
 Fashionable male Christianity is demonstrated by an oc- 
 casional nap in a cushioned and carpeted pew ; in cheerfully 
 paying Easter offerings and Church dues ; in maintaining a 
 certain decency of appearance ; and more especially in 
 hating those who presume to differ in matters of religion. 
 
 That they possess the outward and visible signs of Christi- 
 anity, both sexes exhibit incontestable proofs ; but as to the 
 inward and spiritual grace, they leave it to the vulgar and 
 the fanatical. They are too polite to travel Zionward in 
 such company, and would rather sacrifice heaven altogether, 
 than reach it by any ungenteel mode. Provided they may 
 be among the exclusives here, they will cheerfully run the 
 risk of being among the excluded hereafter. 
 
 Christianity will never have received its full development, 
 and have accomplished its final triumph, until its spirit 
 shall have surmounted its ceremonials, and the reformed 
 religion shall have undergone a new and more searching 
 reformation. 
 
 g 2 
 
84 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 CHURCH and STATE, Alliance of— an interchange 
 of contamination ; a league between the civil magistrate 
 and the priesthood, ostensibly for the maintenance of loyalty, 
 and the suppression of heresy ; — in reality for the enforce- 
 ment of political and religious subjection. If an establish- 
 ment be right, religious liberty is not : and if religious liberty- 
 be right, an establishment is not. The compact between 
 Pontius Pilate and the chiefs of the Synagogue, which 
 ended in the crucifixion of Christ, was but a foreshadowing 
 of that unscriptural union of Church and State, which may 
 almost be said to have crucified Christianity. Dr. War- 
 burton, and others, regard the religion of the majority, as the 
 religion of the State : so that if the Church be united with 
 the State, through the king at its head, it has in England an 
 Episcopalian, in Scotland a Presbyterian, and in Ireland a 
 Catholic head. History and experience attest that this 
 coalition is equally degrading and mischievous to both parties. 
 Equality of civil and religious rights being the grand basis 
 of all safe and healthy government, the State ought not to 
 identify itself with one sect, even where it tolerates all others ; 
 it is its duty to protect all alike, without favour or dis- 
 countenance. For the information of the worthy inhabitants 
 of Noodledom, and of those old women in petticoats or 
 pantaloons, who imagine that the dissolution of this un- 
 sanctioned union would extinguish religion and dissolve the 
 whole frame of civil society, we will state the principal 
 changes that it would effect. The king, no longer the head 
 of the Church, would cease to appoint the Bishops ; the 
 Lords spiritual would have no seats as such in parliament ; 
 the doctrines and worship of the Church would not any 
 longer be regulated and enforced by act of parliament ; 
 civil penalties for religious offences would cease to exist, and 
 all Toleration Acts would die a natural death. Unless it can 
 be shown that the Dissenters, who have no lordly Hierarchy, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 85 
 
 and no Church and State union, are less religious and less 
 patriotic than the Episcopalians, which no one will be hardy 
 enough to assert, what injury could piety or patriotism 
 sustain by placing both parties upon the same broad level of 
 independence ? Manifest, however, and manifold would be 
 the blessings springing from such a change. Jealousies and 
 heartburnings would be healed ; it is not too much to assert 
 that whatever the Church might lose, would be so much clear 
 gain to Christianity ; while the State would be benefited by 
 the removal of all grounds of discontent or disaffection from 
 the numerous and hourly increasing class of conscientious 
 Dissenters. 
 
 That great advantage would accrue to both parties from a 
 severance of the Church and State, is no new-fangled notion 
 of radicals or visionaries, but an opinion which has been 
 deliberately formed and frankly expressed by many wise and 
 pious men, even among the dignitaries of the Church itself. 
 Such were the sentiments of the good and the illustrious 
 Locke. " The single end," says Dr. Paley, " which we ought 
 to propose by religious establishments, is the preservation 
 and communication of religious . knowledge. Every other 
 idea, and every other end that have been mixed with this, — 
 as the making of the Church an engine, or even an ally of 
 the State, converting it into the means of strengthening or 
 of diffusing influence, — or regarding it as a support of regal, 
 in opposition to popular forms of government, — have served 
 only to debase the institution, and to introduce into it 
 numerous corruptions and abuses."* And again in his 
 " Evidences of Christianity," p. ii. ch. 2, the same writer says, 
 " We find in Christ's religion, no scheme of building tcp a 
 hierarchy, or of ministering to the views of human govern- 
 ments" " Our religion, as it came out of the hand of its 
 
 * Moral and Political Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 305. 
 
85 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 founder and his apostles, exhibited a coinplete abstraction 
 from all views, either of ecclesiastical or civil policy." In 
 fact it is little better than profanation to imagine that the 
 religion of God and of truth stands in need of the support 
 of the State. " An alliance between Church and State in a 
 Christian Commonwealth," says Burke, " is in my opinion, 
 an idle and a fanciful speculation." 
 
 Many of the most temperate and enlightened members of 
 the establishment are ashamed of their connection with the 
 State, and would willingly see it quietly dissolved. On their 
 account, and not in apprehension of the clamorous and 
 sordid brethren, who deal in fulminations and menaces, 
 rather than arguments, may the sincere Christian desire to 
 see the Church divorced from an union which many have 
 pronounced adulterous. Herein he will agree with Bishop 
 Warburton, who says in his letters, " The Church, like the 
 Ark of Noah, is worth saving ; not for the sake of the unclean 
 beasts and vermin that almost filled it, and probably made 
 most noise and clamour in itj but for, the little corner of 
 rationality, that was as much distressed by the stink within, 
 as by the tempest without." 
 
 To a rotten ship, say the Italians, every wind is contrary. 
 No wonder, therefore, that the Church finds so many op- 
 ponents of its course : — but for those who have occasioned the 
 clamour to complain of it, and fulminate anathemas and 
 nick-names, will but aggravate the evil, and make its in- 
 evitable remedy more quick and unsparing. What renders 
 the folly and inconsistency of such conduct more glaring, is 
 the fact that some of the most distinguished prelates of the 
 Church have been the most strenuous advocates of Reform. 
 "A Reformer," says Bishop Watson, "of Luther's temper 
 and talents, would, in five years, persuade the people to 
 compel the parliament to abolish tithes, to extinguish 
 pluralities, to enforce residence, to confine episcopacy to the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 87 
 
 overseeing of dioceses, to expunge the Athanasian Creed 
 from our Liturgy, to. free Dissenters from Test Acts, and 
 the ministers of the establishment from subscription to 
 human articles of faith. These, and other matters respecting 
 the Church, ought to be done." — Letter to the Duke of Grafton. 
 
 CHURCH and KING, Toast of— usually means, ac- 
 cording to Dr. Parr, a Church without the gospel, and a 
 King above the law. 
 
 CIGAR-SMOKING— vomiting an offensive exhalation 
 in the face of every passenger. As it was said of Virgil that, 
 in his Georgics, he threw his dung about him with an air of 
 dignity, so may we allow Vesuvius and Mount Etna to 
 smoke, without conceding that privilege to every puny 
 whiffler who may think fit to poison the air with the con- 
 tents of his mouth. Every such culprit ought to be made to 
 swallow his own smoke, like the improved steam-engines. It 
 is a solecism in good manners, that a quasi gentleman should 
 adopt this ploughman's habit, even in the open air ; but to 
 attempt it in any sort of mixed society, whether in a public 
 room or on the top of a stage-coach, should subject the 
 perpetrator to an unceremonious expulsion. It has, never- 
 theless, one advantage, it entices fools to be silent, or only to 
 talk smoke, which is at least an inaudible annoyance. 
 
 After all, perhaps, there is much to be said on both sides, — 
 not of the cigar, for there both sides are alike, — but of the 
 question — audi alteram partem : condemn not a cigar before 
 you have smoked one. Of this last enormity I was never 
 guilty, but, methinks I might point the wit of some fumigator 
 to give a reason for the smoke that is in him ; even as the 
 grindstone may sharpen, though it was never known to cut : 
 
 11 Ego fungar vice cotis, acutum 
 Reddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi." 
 
88 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Voyons / there is an inspiration that may vindicate tobacco 
 without its aid ; suppose we, therefore, some puffer of 
 Havannah, to evaporate the following: — 
 
 EFFUSION- (By a Cigar-Smoker). 
 
 Warriors ! who from the cannon's mouth blow fire, 
 
 Your fame to raise, 
 
 Upon its blaze, 
 Alas ! ye do but light your funeral pyre ! — 
 
 Tempting fate's stroke, 
 Ye fall, and all your glory ends in smoke. 
 Safe in my chair from wounds and woe, 
 My fire and smoke from mine own mouth I blow. 
 
 Ve booksellers ! who deal, like me, in puffs, 
 
 The public smokes, 
 
 You and your hoax, 
 And turns your empty vapour to rebuffs. 
 
 Ye through the nose 
 Pay for each puff; when mine the same way flows, 
 It does not run me into debt ; 
 And thus, the more I fume, the less I fret. 
 
 Authors ! created to be puff d to death, 
 
 And fill the mouth 
 
 Of some uncouth 
 Bookselling wight, who sucks your brains and breath, 
 
 Your leaves thus far 
 {Without its fire) resemble my cigar ; 
 But vapid, uninspired, and flat : 
 When, when, O Bards, will ye compose like that ? 
 
 Since life and the anxieties that share 
 
 Our hope and trust, 
 
 Are smoke and dust, 
 Give me the smoke and dust that banish care. — 
 
 The roll'd leaf bring, 
 Which from its ashes, Phcenix-like, can spring ; 
 The fragrant leaf whose magic balm 
 Can, like Nepenthe, all our sufferings charm. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 89 
 
 Oh, what supreme beatitude is this ! 
 
 What soft and sweet 
 
 Sensations greet, 
 My soul, and wrap it in Elysian bliss ! 
 
 I soar above, 
 Dull earth in these ambrosial clouds, like Jove, 
 And from mine Empyrean height, 
 Look down upon the world with calm delight. 
 
 CIRCLE, The social — a dull merry-go-round which makes 
 us first giddy, and then sick. What is called the round of 
 pleasure, may be compared to a knife-grinder's wheel. 
 When its rotations are duly regulated and adapted to the 
 end proposed, it gives point to the wit, while it brightens, 
 sharpens, and polishes the general surface of the mind and 
 manners. But if we whirl it round with an unintermitting 
 rapidity, it takes off the edge of enjoyment, and soon wears 
 out that which it was intended to refresh and renovate. We 
 have Christian epicureans, who advocate a short life and a 
 merry one, as staunchly as their pagan predecessors, and cry 
 out, with Sir Henry Wotton, that they had rather live five 
 Mays than fifty Novembers. But unfortunately, a short life 
 is not always a merry one, nor is a merry one necessarily 
 short. We must live our appointed term, whether for good 
 or evil, for we cannot suck out the sweets of life, and then 
 lay it down like a squeezed orange. Throwing it away is 
 not getting rid of it. A merry youth may turn to a mournful 
 old age ; we may make a boast of leaving our sins when they 
 have deserted us, and of having mastered our passions when 
 we have only worn them out ; but their ghosts may haunt 
 us in the shape of gout, dropsy, dyspepsia and other tor- 
 ments, when we are only living to do penance for the excesses 
 of our youth. 
 
 An old rake who has survived himself, is the most pitiable 
 object in creation. If we discount our allotted portion of 
 pleasure, and live upon the capital instead of the interest, at 
 
90 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the outset of life, we must expect to be bankrupts at its 
 close. If we cut down the tree for the sake of its spring 
 blossoms, we cannot apply to it for fruits in autumn, or shelter 
 in the winter. The hours may seem short that are passed 
 in revelry and dissipation ; but to suppose that as a matter 
 of course we can thus abbreviate our prescribed term, and 
 make death become due, just as we are tired of life, is to fall 
 into the ludicrous error of the Irishman, who applied to his 
 friend to discount a bill of exchange, stating that it had only 
 thirty days to run. When he brought it, however, it was 
 found that forty days would elapse before it became due, 
 in consequence of which his friend objected to cash it. 
 "Ah, now !" said the Hibernian, " you've forgotten that it is 
 Christmas time. Look how short the days are ! Sure, if it 
 was summer, the whole forty wouldn't make more than 
 thirty." 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES.— If a letter were to be addressed 
 to this most influential word, concluding thus — " I am, Sir, 
 your very obedient humble servant ; " — the greater part of 
 the world might subscribe it, without deviating from the 
 strictest veracity. 
 
 CIVILIZATION, Advancement of— a consolatory pro- 
 gression, which ought to make us proud of the present, and 
 to inspire us with confidence in the future. If one of our 
 savage ancestors, slaughtered, we will suppose, by the in- 
 cursions of some hostile horde, or burnt as a sacrifice in the 
 wicker cages of the Druids, were to revive in the present 
 era, he would find it difficult to pronounce whether the 
 greatest change had occurred in the physical or moral state 
 of his native land. When he expired, our island, covered 
 with dense unhealthy forests, or noxious swamps and wil- 
 dernesses, was thinly inhabited by half-naked tribes, for ever 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 91 
 
 contending with cold and famine, with the beasts of the 
 field, or with fellow barbarians still more ferocious. At his 
 resuscitation he beholds, with utter amazement, how all the 
 past centuries have been the diligent slaves of the present, 
 clearing the forests, draining morasses, digging canals and 
 wells, levelling hills, filling up valleys, making innumerable 
 roads and railways, converting the whole surface of the 
 country into a beautiful and productive garden, or studding 
 it with churches and noble or elegant buildings for every 
 imaginable purpose of use and ornament. 
 
 As yet, however, he will have seen nothing. To give him 
 some faint conception of what civilization has effected since 
 the time of his death, I would read to him a striking passage 
 from a modern writer,* showing how the comforts and 
 luxuries which no king could command a few centuries ago, 
 are now, under the influence of peace and commerce, brought 
 within the reach of the meanest peasant ; — how ships are 
 crossing the seas in all directions to minister to his enjoy- 
 ments ; — how in China they are gathering tea ; in the West 
 Indies sugar and cotton ; in Italy feeding worms, in Saxony 
 shearing sheep ; — how steam engines are spinning and 
 weaving, and pumping out mines ; — how coaches are travel- 
 ling night and day to expedite letters ; — how vessels and 
 vehicles are conveying fuel to every door ; — how fleets are 
 sailing, and armies are sustained to secure for every subject 
 of the realm protection from foreign or domestic violence. 
 I would endeavour to make my barbarian auditor understand 
 that our progress in the intellectual world has been still 
 greater and more marvellous ; I would tell him that almost 
 every man in modern England can read and write ; that 
 penny magazines and halfpenny newspapers are composed 
 by authors of talent for the instruction and amusement of 
 
 * See Dr. Arnott's "Elements of Physics." 
 
92 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the poor ; that in intellectual pleasures, the purest and most 
 exalted of all, the mechanic is upon a par with the monarch ; 
 and that under the salutary influences of Reform, our legis- 
 lature, instead of upholding, as heretofore, the privileges of 
 the few, and increasing the oppression of the many, will 
 study to secure the greatest happiness to the greatest 
 number. I would point out to him that as improvement 
 must now advance in an incalculably accelerated ratio, the 
 melioration of the last thousand years will probably be sur- 
 passed in the course of the next one or two centuries ; and 
 then, desiring him to throw his mind forward, if he could, 
 to the termination of that period, I would lead him to form 
 a notion of what has been, and will be accomplished by the 
 march of intellect and the progress of civilization. 
 
 CLUB. — Dr. Johnson, himself a member of one of these 
 societies, designates a club as " an assembly of good fellows, 
 meeting under certain conditions ; " a definition which would 
 be hardly applicable now-a-days, unless the words "for 
 nothing" were inserted after the adjective "good." Far 
 from originating in sociableness, professional sympathies, 
 or a love of intellectual improvement, our modern clubs, 
 enrolling without associating a mob of strangers, are simply 
 and solely founded upon selfishness and sensuality. What 
 are their leading objects, is thus stated by a writer in one 
 of our magazines : — " Epicurism, in the least elevated ac- 
 ceptation of that misunderstood word — to place the greatest 
 possible luxury, but more especially the pleasures of the 
 palate, within reach of the lowest possible sum — to combine 
 cxclusiveness with voluptuousness — to foster, at the same 
 moment, the love of self, and the alienation from others — 
 to remove men from their proper and natural mode of living 
 — to enable five hundred a-year to command the state, style, 
 and splendour of five thousand — to destroy the taste for 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 93 
 
 simple and domestic pleasures — and to substitute a longing 
 for all the expensive and sensual enjoyments that might have 
 gratified an ancient Sybarite." 
 
 A professional or exclusive club is the most shy, sullen, 
 reserved, and unamiable of all institutions. — " Its union of 
 one class is a separation from all others ; the junction of its 
 members is a dismemberment from the general body of 
 citizens ; it is dissocial in its very association. It is a cabal, 
 a caste, a clique, a coterie, a junto, a conspiracy, a knot, a 
 pack, a gang ; anything, in short, that is close, selfish, dis- 
 junctive, and inhospitable : but if there be in such narrow 
 fellowship any single element of sociability, why then the 
 monks who planted their convents in the desert of the 
 Thebaid, were sociable beings, and useful members of 
 society. Goldsmith very properly condemns the man of 
 talent, 
 
 " ' who narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.' 
 
 " If the division of the male community into grades and 
 classes be a confessed evil, what shall we say to the wide 
 separation of the sexes which this club-mania is daily and 
 rapidly effecting. It will be admitted, that man and woman 
 were meant for one another, collectively as well as sepa- 
 rately. Socially speaking, they are as naturally married to 
 each other, in the aggregate, as are the individual husband 
 and wife ; and * whom God hath joined together let no man 
 put asunder.' The beneficial, the civilizing influences, which 
 the sexes mutually impart and receive in society, are best to 
 be appreciated by the deep and instant degradation which 
 Nature, who never suffers her laws to be violated with im- 
 punity, has invariably entailed upon their disjunction. For 
 evidence of this fact, it will be only necessary to refer to the 
 monasteries and convents. In the society of man, the softer 
 
94 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 sex, discarding some portion of its frivolity and inherent 
 weakness, acquires mental corroboration, and is impercep- 
 tibly imbued with the best and finest emanations of mas- 
 culine character. In female society, the lord of the creation, 
 losing the ruggedness, arrogance, and licentious coarseness 
 of his nature, becomes softened, courteous, and refined, 
 chastening himself with feminine graces, while he loses not 
 a fraction of his proper manliness and dignity. Polish is 
 the result of collision, both morally and physically ; and 
 man's iron nature is not injured, or unduly mollified, but 
 made more useful and attractive, by coming in contact with 
 the magnet of beauty. Acting at once as a stimulant and 
 a restraint, the social intercourse of the two sexes draws 
 forth and invigorates all the purifying, exalting, and delight- 
 ful qualities of our common nature ; while it tends to sup- 
 press, and, not seldom, to eradicate those of an opposite 
 character. From this unrestricted communion flow the 
 graces, the affections, the charms, the sanctities, the chari- 
 ties, of life ; and as benignant Nature ever blesses the in- 
 dividual who contributes to the advancement of his species, 
 from the same source is derived our purest, most exquisite, 
 and most enduring happiness. 
 
 " I lay it down as a broad, incontrovertible axiom, that no 
 married man has a right to belong to a club, and to become 
 an habitual absentee from his home, indulging in hoggish 
 epicurism, while his wife and family are perhaps keeping 
 Lent, that he may afford to feast. What hath he sworn to 
 in his marriage-oath? Merely to maintain his wife, and to 
 make her the mother of his children? No such thing; he 
 hath sworn to forsake all others, and to cleave only unto 
 her, until death shall part them. Is it consistent, either 
 with the letter or the spirit of this vow, that he should 
 deprive her of his society, and make a sort of concubine of 
 his club ? Is a virtuous, honourable, and accomplished wife 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 95 
 
 to be treated like an impure Delilah, into whose house her 
 paramour sneaks in the dark, and skulks away again in the 
 early morning? The little occasional bickerings, from which 
 few married couples are totally exempt, not unfrequently 
 prove, under the soothing influences of children, and the 
 pleasures of the domestic meal, a renewal and confirmation 
 of love ; but now, the sullen husband escapes to his still 
 more sullen club ; he becomes embittered by feeding upon 
 his own angry heart ; a reconciliation is rendered every day 
 more difficult ; he begins to hate his home ; and his occa- 
 sional absence is soon made habitual. Meanwhile, the 
 children lose the benefit of the father's presence and ex- 
 ample ; the father, whose loss is of still more mischievous 
 import, is deprived of all the heart-hallowing influences of 
 his offspring : and the neglected wife, thinking herself justi- 
 fied in seeking from others that society which is denied to 
 her by her husband, is exposed to temptations and dangers, 
 from which she cannot always escape without contamination. 
 To over-rate the conjugal and domestic misery now in actual 
 progress, and all springing from this prolific source, would, 
 I believe, be utterly impossible. How many married couples 
 are there in the middling classes of society, the course of 
 whose alienation and unhappiness might be traced out in the 
 following order ? — 
 
 " Husband. The club—a taste for French cooks, ex- 
 pensive wines, and sensual luxuries — fastidious epicurism — 
 a dislike of the plain meals which he finds at home, although 
 the only ones adapted to his fortune and his station — con- 
 firmed absenteeism and clubbism — hatred of the wife, who 
 reproaches him for his selfish desertion — late hours — estrange- 
 ment — profligacy — misery ! 
 
 "Wife. Natural resentment of neglect — reproaches — 
 altercations — diminution of conjugal affection — dissipation, 
 as a resource against the dulness of home — expensive habits 
 
96 THE TIN TRUMPET, 
 
 — embarrassment — total alienation of heart — dangerous con- 
 nections — infidelity — misery ! 
 
 "Of this account- current,. the items may vary, either in 
 quality or sequence, but the alpha and omega will ever be 
 the same. It will begin with the club, and end with misery." 
 
 COLLEGE — an institution where young men are apt to 
 learn everything but that which professes to be taught, 
 although that which professes to be taught falls very short 
 of what a modern gentleman ought to learn. As a type of 
 the olden times, with all their unredeemed bigotry and pre- 
 judice, our colleges are sadly out of keeping with the nine- 
 teenth century. Their whole system is a specimen of the 
 moral, as some of their structures are of the architectural 
 gothic. Mark the opinion of no incompetent witness, since 
 he was himself an Oxford collegian. 
 
 " Were there no public institutions for education, no sys- 
 tem, no science would be taught, for which there was not 
 some demand, or which the circumstances of the time did not 
 render it either necessary or convenient, or at least fashion- 
 able to learn. A private teacher could never find his account 
 in teaching either an exploded and antiquated system of a 
 science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally 
 believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry 
 and nonsense. Such sciences, such systems, can subsist 
 nowhere but in those incorporated societies for education, 
 whose prosperity and revenue are, in a great measure, inde- 
 pendent of their reputation, and altogether independent of 
 their industry. Were there no public institutions for educa- 
 tion, a gentleman, after going through, with application and 
 abilities, the most complete course of education which the 
 circumstances of the time were supposed to afford, could not 
 come into the world completely ignorant of everything which 
 is the common subject of conversation among gentlemen 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 97 
 
 and men of the world." — Smith's Wealth of Nations, bk. v.. 
 ch. 1, part 3, art. 2. 
 
 If our colleges be still the seats of learning, it can only be, 
 for the reason assigned in the old epigram — 
 
 " No wonder that Oxford and Cambridge profound, 
 In learning and science so greatly abound, 
 Since some carry thither a little each day, 
 And we meet with so few who bring any away." 
 
 COMFORT.— "Ah !" said a John Bull to a Frenchman, 
 " you have no such word as ' comfort ' in your language." — 
 " I am glad of it," replied the Gaul ; — " you Englishmen are 
 slaves to your comforts, in order that you may master them." 
 There is some truth in this reproach. Perpetually toiling for 
 money, with the professed object of being enabled to live 
 comfortably, we sacrifice every comfort in the acquisition of 
 a fortune, in order that when we have obtained it, we may 
 have an additional discomfort from our anxiety to preserve 
 or increase it. Thus do we " lose by seeking what we seek 
 to find." On the other hand, we may find a comfort where 
 we never looked for it : as, for instance, in a great affliction, 
 the very magnitude of which renders us insensible to all 
 smaller ones. Comfort, in our national acceptation of the 
 word, has been stated to consist in those little luxuries and 
 conveniences, the want of which makes an Englishman 
 miserable, while their possession does not make him happy. 
 
 COMMISERATION, Felonious.— There is a large class 
 of idle people in this country, whose palled and jaded feelings 
 can only be roused by some powerful excitement, whence 
 they derive so much pleasure, that they immediately yearn 
 towards the exciter, however undeserving of their pity. They 
 like a murderer, because he relieves them for a moment from 
 listlessness and ennui, and assists in committing another 
 
 H 
 
98 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 murder, by helping them to kill their greatest enemy— time, 
 The spurious, morbid, perverted sympathy which can only 
 be elicited by criminals and malefactors, generally increasing 
 with the enormity of their offences, and which I have stig- 
 matised as the " felonious commiseration," may be compared 
 to the diseased taste of certain epicures, who attach no value 
 to a cheese while it is sound, but doat upon it when it be- 
 comes corrupt, rotten, and rank with all sorts of offensive 
 -abominations. 
 
 COMMON-PLACE PEOPLE— are content to walk for 
 life in the rut made by their predecessors, long after it has 
 become so deep that they cannot see to the right or left. 
 This keeps them in ignorance and darkness, but it saves 
 them the trouble of thinking or acting for themselves. 
 
 COMPETENCY — a financial horizon, which recedes as 
 we advance. This word is by no means of indefinite meaning. 
 It always signifies a little more than we possess. We are 
 none of us wealthy enough in our own opinion, although we 
 may be too much so in the judgment of others. Content is 
 the best opulence, because it is the pleasantest, and the 
 surest. The richest man is he who does not want that which 
 is wanting to him ; the poorest is the miser, who wants that 
 which he has. 
 
 COMPLIMENT — a thing often paid by people who pay 
 nothing else : — the counterfeit coin of those who substitute 
 the form, fashion, and language of politeness, for its sub- 
 stance and its feeling. Throwing compliments, like dice, is 
 a game of hazard, at which the incautious player may get 
 nothing but a sharp rap on the knuckles. He who sports 
 compliments, unless he knows how to take a good aim, may 
 miss his mark, and be wounded by the recoil of his own 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 99 
 
 gun. Above all things, it is incumbent upon him to reflect, 
 that even a blue-stocking will look black at him, if he attempt 
 to flatter her mental, at the expense of her personal attractions. 
 At a dinner-party in Paris, an ugly and dull German baron 7 
 finding himself seated between the celebrated Madame de 
 Stael, and Madame Recamier, the belle of the day, whis- 
 pered to the former — " Am I not fortunate, to be thus placed 
 between beauty and talent?" — "Not so very fortunate," re- 
 plied the offended authoress, " since you possess neither one 
 nor the other ! " 
 
 "Helas, le ftauvre due cPAumottt /" exclaimed one of his 
 female friends, — " who would have thought that he would, 
 have been carried off so suddenly ? — On the very morning of 
 his death, he had played as usual with his parroquet and his 
 monkey ; — he had said, give me my snuff-box, brush this 
 arm chair, let me see my new court dress ; — in fact, he 
 possessed all his ideas and faculties with as much strength 
 and vigour as ever he had done at the age of thirty." What 
 an unintended satire in these tender compliments. Not more 
 so, however, than in the naif remark of a lady, when a cen- 
 sorious and conceited neighbour, vaunting of her good figure, 
 boasted that herself and her sister had always been remark- 
 able for the beauty of their backs. " That is the reason, I 
 suppose, that your friends are always so glad to see them." 
 A sarcasm may often wear the garb of a compliment, and be 
 taken for one by the simple-witted. The Abbd Voisenon 
 once made a complaint that he was unduly charged with the 
 absurd sayings of others. " Monsieur? Abbe? replied D'Alem- 
 bert, " on ne prete qrfaux riches." 
 
 Not altogether unworthy of being recorded is the compli- 
 ment attributed to a butcher at Whitby. — " This fillet of veal 
 seems not quite so white as usual," said a fair lady, laying 
 her hand upon it. — " Put on your glove, Ma'am, and you will 
 think otherwise," was the complaisant reply. 
 
 h 2 
 
 10FC. 
 
ioc THE TIN TRUMPET j 
 
 CONCEIT — taking ourselves at our own valuation, gene- 
 rally about fifty per cent, above the fair worth. Minerva 
 threw away the flute, when she found that it puffed up her 
 own cheeks ; but if we cast away the flute now-a-days, it is 
 only that we may take a larger instrument of puffing, by 
 becoming our own trumpeters. Empty minds are the most 
 prone to soar above their proper sphere, like paper kites, 
 which are kept aloft by their own lightness ; while those that 
 are better stored are prone to humility, like heavily laden 
 vessels, of which we see the less the more richly and deeply 
 they are freighted. The corn bends itself downward when 
 its ears are filled, but when the heads of the conceited 
 are filled with self-adulation, they only lift them up the 
 higher. 
 
 Perhaps it is a benevolent provision of Providence, that we 
 should possess in fancy those good qualities which are with- 
 held from us in reality ; for if we did not occasionally think 
 well of ourselves, we should be more apt to think ill of 
 others. It must be confessed, that the conceited and the 
 vain have a light and pleasant duty to perform, since they 
 have but one to please, and in that object they seldom fail. 
 Self-love, moreover, is the only love not liable to the pangs of 
 jealousy. Pity ! that a quick perception of our own deserts 
 generally blinds us to the merits of others ; that we should 
 see more than all the world in the former instance, and less 
 in the latter ! In one respect, conceited people show a 
 degree of discernment, for which they deserve credit, — they 
 soon become tired of their own company. Especially for- 
 tunate are they in another respect ; for while the really wise, 
 witty, and beautiful, are subject to casualties of defect, age, 
 and sickness, the imaginary possessor of those qualities wears 
 a charmed life, and fears not the assaults of fate or time, since 
 a nonentity is invulnerable. Even the really gifted, how- 
 ever, may sometimes become conceited. Northcote, the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 101 
 
 artist, whose intellectual powers were equal to his profes- 
 sional talent, and who thought it much easier for a man to 
 be his superior than his equal, being once asked by Sir 
 William Knighton what he thought of the Prince Regent, 
 replied, " I am not acquainted with him." — " Why, his Royal 
 Highness says he knows you." — " Know me ! — Pooh ! that's 
 all his brag." 
 
 CONGREGATION — a public assemblage in a spiritual 
 theatre, where all the performers are professors, but where 
 very few of the professors are performers. 
 
 " Taking them one with another," said the Rev. S — S — , 
 " I believe my congregation to be most exemplary observers 
 of the religious ordinances ; for the poor keep all the fasts, 
 and the rich all the feasts." This fortunate flock might be 
 matched with the crew of the A frigate, whose com- 
 mander, Capt. R — , told a friend that he had just left them 
 the happiest set of fellows in the world. Knowing the 
 captain's extreme severity, his friend expressed some sur- 
 prise at this statement, and demanded an explanation. 
 " Why," said the disciplinarian, " I have just had nineteen of 
 the rascals flogged, and they are happy that it is over, while 
 all the rest are happy that they have escaped." 
 
 CONSCIENCE — something to swear by. Conscience 
 being regulated by the opinion of the world, has no very 
 determinate standard of morality. Among the ancient 
 Greeks and Romans, suicide was a magnanimous virtue, 
 with us it is a cowardly crime. The Spartans taught their 
 children to steal ; we whip and imprison ours for the same 
 act. No man's conscience stings him for killing a single 
 adversary in a duel, or scores in war, because these deeds 
 are in accordance with the usages of society ; but he may, 
 nevertheless, be arraigned, perchance, for murder, at the bar 
 
102 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of the Almighty. Terror of conscience, therefore, would 
 seem to be the fear of infamy, detection, or punishment in 
 this world, rather than in the next. Criminals, who volun- 
 tarily surrender themselves to justice, and confess their mis- 
 deeds, are, doubtless, driven to that act of desperation by their 
 conscience ; but it is from a dread of Jack Ketch, and the 
 intolerableness of suspense. They would rather be hanged 
 once in reality than every day in imagination. Pass a law 
 that shall legalize their offences, or let them be tried and 
 acquitted, from some flaw in the indictment, and their minds 
 will be wonderfully tranquillized. How much safer a guide 
 and monitor would our conscience become, if we adapted it 
 to the immutable laws of God, instead of the fluctuating 
 opinions of man, and were penetrated with the great truth 
 that, whatever may be our present feelings, there is an in- 
 evitable ultimate connection between happiness and virtue, 
 misery and vice. 
 
 CONSERVATIVE— one who has evinced a good sense, 
 that entitles him to our respect, by becoming ashamed of the 
 word Tory. With the exception of the mere boroughmonger, 
 whose sordid motives deserve no indulgence, every generous 
 reformer will give credit to his conservative opponent for the 
 same sincerity of feeling, and purity of purpose, that he him- 
 self professes and claims. Invective and personality prove 
 nothing on either side, but a lamentable want of good taste 
 and good argument. There is one party to which all aspire 
 to belong, and whose characteristics none can mistake — that 
 of the Gentleman ; not limiting this all-embracing appel- 
 lation to the vulgar distinctions of rank and external appear- 
 ance, but to the innate gentleness and liberality, which a 
 peasant or an artisan may possess in as eminent a degree as 
 a peer or a prince. Let the reformer, whose victory is won, 
 grace it by forbearance — let the conservative, whose further 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 103 
 
 opposition is useless, disdain the guerilla warfare of faction. 
 The former should now employ himself in realising the 
 advantages he so confidently anticipated from his great 
 measure ; the latter, in guarding against the dangers he not 
 less positively prognosticated. Gladly holding out the right 
 hand of fellowship to each other, both should unite in endea- 
 vouring to accomplish their mutual object — the advancement, 
 the glory, and the happiness of their common country. So 
 shall old England, with improved institutions, renovated 
 energies, and an united people, re-assert her proud prerogative 
 of teaching the nations how to live. 
 
 CONSOLATION for unsuccessful authors.— " Many 
 works," says Chamfort, " succeed, because the mediocrity of 
 the author's ideas exactly corresponds with the mediocrity of 
 ideas on the part of the public." Writers who fail in hitting 
 the present taste, are apt to appeal to posterity, which, even 
 if it should ratify their fond anticipations, (a rare occurrence,) 
 will only show that they have still failed, because they have 
 gained an object which they did not seek, and missed that 
 which they sought. Let him profess what he will, every man 
 writes to be read by his contemporaries ; otherwise why does 
 he publish ? It would be a poor compliment to a sportsman 
 to say — " You have missed all the birds, at which you took 
 aim, but you fire so well that your shot will be sure to hit 
 something before they fall to the ground." He who professes 
 to do without the living, and yet wants the suffrages of the 
 unborn, stands little chance of obtaining his election, and is 
 sure that he cannot enjoy it, even if he succeed. Few will 
 possess such claims to celebrity as Kepler, the German 
 astronomer ; and yet there was a sense of mortification, as 
 well as an almost profane arrogance, when, on the failure of 
 one of his works to excite attention, he exclaimed, " My book 
 may well wait a hundred years for a reader, since God himself 
 
104 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 has been content to wait six thousand years for an observer 
 like myself." 
 
 CONTENT — a mental Will-o'-the-wisp, which all are 
 seeking, but which few attain. And yet every one might 
 succeed, if he would think more of what he has, and less of 
 what he wants. Daily experience may convince us that those 
 who possess what we covet, are not a jot more happy than 
 ourselves : why then should we labour and toil in chasing 
 disappointment ? How few feel gratitude for what they have, 
 compared to those who pine for what they have not ! Ant 
 Ccesar aut nullus is the prevalent motto : not to have every- 
 thing, is to have nothing. Like the famous Duke of Buck- 
 ingham, some are more impatient of successes, than others 
 are of reverses ; by basking in the sunshine of fortune, they 
 become sour, and turn to vinegar. 
 
 " Let this plain truth those ingrates strike, 
 Who still, though bless'd, new blessings crave, 
 
 That we may all have what we like, 
 Simply by liking what we have." 
 
 Or, if this fail, let us call arithmetic to our aid, and learn 
 content from comparing ourselves and our lot with the many 
 who want what we possess, rather than with the few who 
 possess what we want. 
 
 CONTROVERSY.— What a blessing to the world if it 
 had exemplified the dictum of Sir William Temple, that all 
 such controversies as can never end, had much better never 
 begin ! At the present moment, when the necessity of a 
 Church reformation is so generally discussed, it may not be 
 uninteresting to reprint the lines on the famous controversy 
 between John Rainolds and one of his brothers, wherein each 
 converted the other. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 105 
 
 " In points of faith, some undetermin'd jars, 
 Betwixt two brothers, kindled civil wars ; 
 One for the Church's reformation stood, 
 The other held no reformation good. 
 The points propos'd, they traversed the field 
 With equal strength ; so equally they yield. 
 As each desir'd, his brother each subdues ; 
 Yet such their faith, that each his faith does lose. 
 Both joyed in being conquered, strange to say, 
 And yet both mourn'd, because both won the day." 
 
 As to religious controversy, we will set an example worthy 
 of all imitation, by saying nothing about it, further than to 
 refer the curious in such matters, to the tomb of Sir Henry 
 Wotton, in the chapel at Eton, whereon is the following 
 inscription — " Hie jacet hujus sentential primus auctor : — 
 Disputandi pruritics Ecclesice scabies." " Here lies the first 
 author of this sentence : — The itch of disputation is the scab 
 of the Church" 
 
 CONVERSATION, Rational— see Library, Solitude, 
 anything but company. Despotic but civilized countries, such 
 as France under the old monarchy, where the men having 
 little or no share in the government, and being unembittered 
 by party politics, threw their whole minds into social inter- 
 course, are the best adapted for conversational excellence. In 
 England we have too much business, and too much political 
 acrimony to allow us either time or aptitude for the enjoy- 
 ment of society in all its nonchalance, sprightliness and viva- 
 city ; while even the narrow bounds left to us, are still further 
 restricted by our pride, reserve, and exclusiveness. On these 
 accounts English women are in general much, better conver- 
 sationalists than the men. In many families, the daughters 
 have more cultivated minds than the sons, and will discourse 
 of literature and the arts, while their brothers can talk of 
 little but dogs and guns, a horse-race, or a boxing-match. 
 
106 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Even upon politics, when they will discuss them, women are 
 more philosophical than men, because their passions and 
 interests are not so deeply embarked. Not being educated 
 for the business of life, they are more dispassionate, and are 
 only the more agreeable for being ornamental instead of 
 useful. 
 
 How incalculably would the tone of conversation be im- 
 proved, if it offered no exceptions to the example of Bishop 
 Beveridge : " I resolve never to speak of a man's virtues to 
 his face, nor of his faults behind his back." A golden rule ! 
 the observation of which would at once banish flattery and 
 defamation from the earth. Conversation stock being a joint 
 and common property, every one should take a share in it ; 
 and yet there may be societies in which silence will be our 
 best contribution. When Isocrates, dining with the King of 
 Cyprus, was asked why he did not mix in the discourse of 
 the company, he replied, "What is seasonable I do not 
 know, and what I know is not seasonable." 
 
 A brilliant talker is not always liked by those whom he has 
 most amused, for we are seldom pleased with those who have 
 in any way made us feel our inferiority. " The happiest con- 
 versation," says Dr. Johnson, " is that of which nothing is 
 distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing im- 
 pression." — " No one," says Dean Locker, "will ever shine in 
 conversation, who thinks of saying fine things : to please, 
 one must say many things indifferent, and many very bad." 
 This last rule is rarely violated in society ! 
 
 COQUETTE — a female general who builds her fame on 
 her advances. A coquette may be compared to tinder, which 
 lays itself out to catch sparks, but does not always succeed 
 in lighting up a match. Men are perverse creatures ; they 
 fly that which pursues them, and pursue that which flies 
 them. Forwardness, therefore, on the part of a female makes 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 107 
 
 them draw back, and backwardness draws them forward. 
 There will always be this difference between a coquette and 
 a woman of sense and modesty, that while one courts every 
 man, every man will court the other. When the coquette 
 settles into an old maid, it is not unusual to see her as staid 
 and formal as she was previously versatile : — 
 
 " Thus weathercocks which for a while, 
 
 Have turned about with every blast, 
 Grown old, and destitute of oil, 
 
 Rust to a point, and fix at last." 
 
 CORPORATION and TEST ACTS.— The obstinacy, the 
 blindness, the fanatical fury with which the repeal of these 
 obnoxious acts was opposed, from the days of James II. to 
 our own ; the total oblivion into which their recent abrogation 
 has already fallen ; and the consequent proofs of their abso- 
 lute nullity, as affecting the security of the Church, forms the 
 bitterest satire upon the ignorance and intolerance of those 
 who so long and so fiercely opposed their repeal. 
 
 COUNTERACTION— a balancing provision of nature, 
 for the prevention of excess, whether in morals or mechanics. 
 But for this salutary restraint, even our virtues would be 
 pushed to a vicious extreme. How many men do we encounter 
 in society whose praises of their friends, when speaking to 
 their faces, would appear fulsome flattery, were it not qualified 
 by their disparagement of the same friends behind their 
 backs ! Others there are whose warm offers of assistance, 
 to such as do not need their aid, would appear generous even 
 to a fault, did we not invariably find that they are equally 
 cold, shy, and cautious where there is any probability of their 
 professions being accepted. People may run into excess 
 with their vices, but their virtues, thanks to this wholesome 
 
io8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 principle of counteraction, are seldom urged beyond the 
 boundaries of prudence. 
 
 COURAGE — the fear of being thought a coward. The 
 reverence that withholds us from violating the laws of God 
 or man, is not infrequently branded with the name of cow- 
 ardice. The Spartans had a saying, that he who stood most 
 in fear of the law, generally showed the least fear of an enemy. 
 We may infer the truth of this dictum from the reverse of the 
 proposition, for daily experience shows us that they who are 
 the most daring in a bad cause, are often the most pusillani- 
 mous in a good one. Bravery is a cheap and vulgar quality, 
 of which the highest instances are frequently found in the 
 lowest savages, and which is often still more conspicuous in 
 the brute creation, than in the most intrepid of the human 
 race. Equally signal were the courage and the candour of 
 the man of Amiens, who being driven to the gates of his own 
 city, cried out, " Come on, if you dare, cuckolds of Abbeville ; 
 we are here four to one of you." 
 
 COURT. — "La Cour" says La Bruyere, " ne rend pas 
 content; mats elle empeche qu'on ne le soit ailleurs." If 
 there be truth in this position, a luckless courtier must 
 somewhat resemble the showman's amphibious animal — 
 " who cannot live on the land, and dies in the water." 
 
 COUSIN — a periodical bore from the country, who, be- 
 cause you happen to have some of his blood, thinks he may 
 inflict the whole of his body upon you during his stay in 
 town. We do not mention his mind, because it is generally 
 a nonentity. 
 
 CREATION, Lord of the— an ephemeral insect, the 
 slave, too often, of his own passions. If this magisterial 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 109 
 
 worm contemplates a map of the world, he will find that 
 nearly three-fifths of it are covered by the sea and polar ice, 
 and appear consequently to have been made for the occupa- 
 tion and accommodation of fishes, rather than of human 
 beings ; while no small portion of the earth is in the pos- 
 session of wild beasts and savages. If he considers his 
 body, he will find it inferior, in some £f its most important 
 functions, to many of the animals ; but if he look into his 
 mind, he will instantly discover sufficient vindication for the 
 proud title he has assumed. By the study of Geology, he 
 can throw back his existence into the remote seras, long 
 before the creation of man. History makes him contem- 
 porary with all the celebrated nations of antiquity ; specula- 
 tion carries his life forward into an illimitable futurity ; 
 Astronomy enables him to develope the laws by which the 
 universe is governed, and to penetrate, as it were, into the 
 secrets of the Deity. Thus doth he conquer both time and 
 space. The beautiful and majestic earth is his footstool, he 
 walks between two eternities, God is everywhere round about 
 Him, a beatific immortality is before him. Truly this august 
 creature may justly term himself the Lord of the Creation. 
 
 CREDULITY— an instinct of youth. "The simple be- 
 lieveth every word, but the prudent man looketh well to his 
 going." Prov. xiv. 15. Credulity diminishes as we gather 
 wisdom by experience, and yet, even among the old and 
 suspicious, it is probable that many falsehoods are believed, 
 for a single truth that is disbelieved. The young having a 
 constant tendency to welcome pleasant and repel disagree- 
 able impressions, reject as long as they can the painful feel- 
 ing of suspicion. Belief, like a young puppy, is born blind ; 
 and must swallow whatever food is given to it ; when it can 
 see, it caters for itself. Or it may be better compared to the 
 block of marble, and Truth to the statue within it, at which 
 
no THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 we can only arrive by perpetually cutting away the frag- 
 ments that enclose and conceal it. As a good workman is 
 known by the quantity of his chips, so may a penetrative 
 mind by the rubbish and heaps of discarded credulity with 
 which it is surrounded. Taking the whole world at the 
 present moment, can it be said to believe a thousandth part 
 of what it believed a Jhousand years ago ? 
 
 CREED, Compulsory — an attempt to cast the minds of 
 others in the same mould as our own, which is about as 
 likely to be successful as if a similar experiment were applied 
 to the body. Hear the opinion of St. Hilary upon this 
 subject — " It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous, 
 that there are at present as many creeds as there are opinions 
 among men. We make creeds arbitrarily, and explain them 
 as arbitrarily. We can't be ignorant that, since the council 
 of Nice, we have done nothing but make creeds. We make 
 creeds every year, nay every morn : we repent of what we 
 have done ; we defend those that repent ; we anathematize 
 those we have defended ; we condemn the doctrine of others 
 in ourselves, or our own in that of others ; and reciprocally 
 tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of one 
 another's ruin." — (Ad Constant) 
 
 Creeds are doubly injurious in their operation ; they occa- 
 sion a positive as well as a negative evil to the Church, by 
 excluding the conscientious and upright, while they admit 
 the subservient and unscrupulous. " Though some purposes 
 of order and tranquillity," says Paley, " may be answered by 
 the establishment of creeds and confessions, yet they are at 
 all times attended with serious inconvenience : they check 
 inquiry ; they violate liberty ; they ensnare the consciences 
 of the clergy, by holding out temptations to prevarication." — 
 Moral and Political Philosophy, bk. vi. ch. 10. 
 
 The same writer notices another, and still more crying 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. iix 
 
 evil to which they inevitably tend — " Creeds and confes- 
 sions, however they may express the persuasion, or be accom- 
 modated to the controversies or to the fears of the age in 
 which they are composed, in process of time, and by reason 
 of the changes which are wont to take place in the judgment 
 of mankind upon religious subjects, they come at length to 
 contradict the actual opinions of the Church, whose doctrines 
 they profess to contain." — Ibid. bk. vi. ch. 10. So that these 
 tyrannical and useless shackles of the mind actually promote 
 perjury or equivocation in the pastor, while they obstruct the 
 progress of knowledge and of Christianity among the flock ! 
 — What more can be added to show the necessity for their 
 abolition? 
 
 CRITICISM — very often consists in measuring the learn- 
 ing and the wisdom of others, either by our own ignorance, 
 or by our little technical and pedantic partialities and preju- 
 dices. Every one has heard of the mathematician who 
 objected to Shakspeare, that his works proved nothing. 
 Equally luminous was the remark of the lawyer, who happen- 
 ing to catch the words — " a deed without a name," — uttered 
 by the witches in Macbeth, repeated — "A deed without a 
 name ! — why, 'tis void." In the same enlarged spirit is much 
 of our criticism written ; but even this is better than the 
 feeling of rancour and bitterness by which it is too often per- 
 verted from its legitimate ends, and rendered subservient, 
 by the most disingenuous acts, to the gratification of per- 
 sonal pique, or party malevolence. As the devil can quote 
 scripture for his purpose, so can the practised critic, by 
 severing passages from their context, and placing them in 
 a ridiculous or distorting light, make the most praiseworthy 
 work appear to condemn itself. A book thus unfairly treated, 
 may be compared to the laurel, of which there is honour in 
 the leaves, but poison in the extract. 
 
iT2 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Of much of our contemporary criticism, which consists 
 rather in reviewing writers than writings, we may find a fair 
 type in the following passage from a letter of the celebrated 
 Waller: "The old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath 
 published a tedious poem on the fall of man ; if its length be 
 not considered as merit, it hath no other." 
 
 Pepys, in his Memoirs, thus speaks of Hudibras — " When 
 I came to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter 
 knight going to the wars, that I am ashamed of it ; and by 
 and by, meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to 
 Mr. Battersby for i&£ I" There are living critics who seem 
 to have caught the mantle of these sapient judges. 
 
 CRY, Conservative — an imitation of the cunning rogue 
 who calls out " Pickpocket ! " — in order that, by diverting 
 our attention to others, he may effect his own escape with 
 the plunder he has made. This is a favourite device with 
 corruptionists of all sorts. Whenever there is a cry that the 
 State is in danger, we may be confident that it is about to be 
 rendered more secure by some popular concession ; and 
 when our ears are stunned by vociferations of the Church 
 being in danger, we may safely suspect that it is about to be 
 fortified by the removal of some act of intolerance, or the 
 reform of some gross abuse. It is one of the most en- 
 couraging signs of the times, that this interested clamour, 
 once so influential, is now little better than a brutum 
 fulmen. 
 
 CUNNING — the simplicity by which knaves generally 
 outwit themselves. As the ignorant and unsuspicious are 
 often protected by their singleness of purpose, so are the 
 crafty and designing not unfrequently foiled by their dupli- 
 city. It is not every rogue that, like a bowl, can gain his 
 object the better by deviating from the straight line ; al- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 113 
 
 though there is one straight line to which the rogue's devia- 
 tions are very apt to conduct him. 
 
 CURIOSITY — looking over other people's affairs, and 
 overlooking our own. If a spy may be executed by the laws 
 of war, surely a Paul Pry may be kicked or horsewhipped by 
 the laws of society. There is no peace with such a man, un- 
 less you declare war against him. Xenocrates, reprehend- 
 ing curiosity, said, " It was as rude to intrude into another 
 man's house with your eyes, as with your feet." 
 
 CUSTOM — a reason for irrational things, and an excuse 
 for inexcusable ones. While we exercise our own judgment 
 in all matters of importance, we should do well, in trifles, to 
 conform, without inquiry, to existing modes. " A froward 
 retention of custom," says Lord Bacon, " is as turbulent a 
 thing as an innovation ; " a dictum which we recommend to 
 the special consideration of our Conservatives. Most shrewd 
 and discreet was the advice of the old lady, who, on her first 
 settlement at Constantinople, advised her children to con- 
 form strictly to the manners and customs of the inhabitants, 
 adding — " When people are in Turkey, they should live a& 
 turkeys live." Perhaps the power of custom was never 
 more strongly exemplified than in the case of Ariosto's hero, 
 who was so habituated to fighting, that he went on combat- 
 ing, even after he was dead. 
 
 ' * II pover uomo che non se n'era accorto, 
 Andava combattendo— ed era morto." 
 
ji 4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 AY AND MARTIN— falsifiers of prophecy. 
 Thirty years ago, our wiseacres predicted, that 
 when all could read and write, we should find 
 none to black our shoes. The day of evil has 
 arrived : everybody can read and write ; our 
 shoes are not only better blacked than ever, but they are 
 polished by comparatively polished people; our blacking- 
 makers acquire fortunes, and build palaces, thus giving en- 
 couragement to other arts than the black one ; and it is even 
 reported, that a London firm keeps a regular bard upon the 
 establishment, to write poetical puffs. 
 
 Nevertheless, we have heard of a saucy knight of the 
 shoulder-knot, who, on applying to the irascible Colonel 
 
 B , while he was at his desk, for the vacant situation of 
 
 valet, asked permission to state beforehand that he never 
 touched a boot, and inquired who was to do the black work? 
 — " That I do myself," cried the Colonel, throwing the ink- 
 stand in his face ; — " and as you never touch a boot, I must 
 make my boot touch you," — with which words he kicked 
 him down stairs. 
 
 DEATH— the sleeping partner of life — a change of exist- 
 ence. This great and insolvable mystery, which we are 
 ever flying from and running towards, is by no means the 
 QofSephu (poPepwrarov that our fancy somtimes represents it. 
 To live is, in fact, to die, and to die is to live ; for the body 
 is the grave of the soul, and death the gate of life. If to 
 expire be an evil, it is only a negative one, which might well 
 be endured, since it terminates those that are positive. If it 
 be a rod, it is like that of Aaron, which blossoms and bears 
 the fruit of peace. Why should a long, be less pleasant 
 than a short sleep? Post-natal, cannot differ from ante- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 115 
 
 natal unconsciousness : we were dead before we lived ; 
 ceasing to exist is only returning to our former state, speak- 
 ing always with reference to this world. 
 
 It is what we are flying from, rather than to, that often 
 makes us unwilling to sustain so " violent a wrench from all 
 we love ;" an argument which one of the fathers adduces as 
 an excuse for the bitterness of the world. " Amarus est mun- 
 dus, et diligitur. Puta, si dulcis esset, qualiter amareturP 
 A French monarch being told, in his last moments, that he 
 would soon be a saint in heaven, exclaimed, sorrowfully, " I 
 should have been quite content to remain King of France 
 and Navarre." 
 
 "Ah, David, David !" said Johnson to Garrick, who had 
 been showing him his house and grounds at Hampton, — 
 " these are the things that make a death-bed terrible !" Had 
 he been reading in the Alceste — 
 
 Ce sont les douceurs de la vie, 
 Qui font les horreurs du trepas; "- 
 
 or Horace's 
 
 ' ' Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens 
 Uxor, neque harum quas colis arborum, 
 Te, prseter invisos cupressos, 
 
 Ulla brevem dominum sequetur ! " 
 
 Montaigne makes Nature address man in the following 
 words : — " Sortez de ce mo?ide comme vous y Hes entrej le 
 mime passage que vous avez faie de la mort a la vie, sans 
 passion et sans fray eur, refaites-la de la vie a la ?nort. Voire 
 mort est une des pieces de Vordre de Vunivers ; une piece 
 
 de la vie du monde. Si vous n'aviez la mort, vous me 
 
 mauderiez sans cesse de vous en avoir fir ive. n 
 
 " O Death, I bless thee !" exclaims Le Mercier, in a tone 
 of bitter eloquence — " Thou shakest tyrants ; thou reducest 
 to dust those whom the world had flattered, and who made 
 
 1 2 
 
n6 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 mankind their footstool. They fall, and we breathe more 
 freely. Hope of the unfortunate! terror of the wicked! 
 stretch out thine arm, and strike the persecutors of the earth. 
 And ye voracious worms ! my friends and my avengers ! 
 hasten in crowds to the feast of their crime-fattened car- 
 casses !" 
 
 He that would die sooner or later than he ought, is equally 
 a coward. Csesar, when he heard of any sudden death, used 
 to wish — <( szbi et snis euthanasiam similem? and he was 
 right ; for the aspect, the threats, and the bark, of death, are 
 worse than his bite. 
 
 The author of the following stanzas seems to have been of 
 Caesar's opinion : — 
 
 " Oh ! come not, thou skeleton king, in the garb 
 Of a lingering sickness to summon thy prize, 
 
 To hover above me with menacing barb, 
 And dangle its ominous glare in mine eyes — 
 
 For see ! I have open'd my breast, that thy dart 
 
 May be steadily aim'd at a resolute heart. 
 
 " Be the grass of the meadow my pillow of death, 
 
 And the friends that surround it — the sea and the sky ; 
 May the angel- wing'd breezes receive my last breath, 
 
 To be borne to its heavenly giver on high ! — 
 Be the spot where I fall unprofaned by a tear, 
 Save the dews of the night that descend on my bier." 
 
 Death is the only subject upon which everybody speaks 
 and writes, without a possibility of having experienced what 
 he undertakes to discuss. Contempt of it is seldom real ; it is 
 but the love of glory : many, besides Mirabeau, have drama- 
 tized their own exits. Most consolatory is the reflection, that if 
 this great consummation puts an end to the enjoyments of 
 some, it terminates the sufferings of all. Death is a silent, 
 peaceful genius, who rocks our second childhood to sleep in 
 the cradle of the coffin. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 117 
 
 It is the proud prerogative of noble natures, that they 
 retain their influence after death. The lamps which guided 
 us on earth, become stars to light us from above, and the 
 beneficent may still claim our aspirations as the blessed ; — a 
 species of apotheosis equally honourable to the living and the 
 dead. 
 
 DEBT, National — mortgaging the property of our 
 posterity, that we may be better enabled to destroy our con- 
 temporaries. It may be questionable, whether any commu- 
 nity has a moral right to discount the future, for the purpose 
 of tormenting or corrupting the present ; to exhaust the 
 resources of many ages, that it may render the pugnacity 
 and ambition of its own more extensively mischievous. Is 
 there no limit to this right, or, rather, wrong ; no check, but 
 the frightful one of a national bankruptcy ? If parliament, 
 for instance, for the purpose of raising a large loan, were to 
 sell all our unborn children into slavery, would our offspring 
 be legally bound to submit to bondage ? and, if not, are there 
 not limits to financial bondage? To a certain extent, the 
 latter includes the former ; for the person is often fettered 
 where the purse is crippled and straitened. 
 
 Well is it that these questions should be discussed, for the 
 universal discontinuance of the funding system would be an • 
 incalculable blessing to the world, by cutting the sinews of 
 war. While it lasts, however, let its engagements be sacredly 
 observed. 
 
 The injurious persons who maintain that the weight of our 
 debt gives solidity to our political institutions, and that its 
 increase only adds to our security, remind one of the sapient 
 Justice, who, finding the ice begin to crack, as he was cros- 
 sing the frozen Thames, cried out to his servant — "John, 
 there seems to be some danger here ; so, for our mutual 
 safety, do pry thee help me over on your back." 
 
ii8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Speaking of the difference between laying out money in 
 land, or investing it in the funds, it was said by Soame 
 Jenyns, that one was principal without interest, and the other 
 interest without principal. 
 
 DECEPTION — a principal ingredient in happiness. 
 Did we possess the spear of Ithuriel, or could we realise the 
 suggestion of Momus, we should gain a fearful loss. An 
 enemy to education, when told that the schoolmaster was 
 abroad, replied, " I am very glad to hear it ; I hope he will 
 remain there !" A friend to his species will utter a similar 
 aspiration respecting Truth, if he believe the popular saying, 
 that she lies at the bottom of a well. Instead of regretting 
 that we are sometimes deceived, we should rather lament 
 that we are ever undeceived. But, alas ! as Seneca says — 
 " Nemo omnes, neminem omnes fefellerunt? — None deceives 
 all, and none have all deceived. 
 
 DEDICATION — inscribing to an individual that, which, 
 if it be worth encouragement, will find its best patron in the 
 public. Kopp, the German, prefixed the following short, but 
 pithy dedication to his Palasographia Critica : — " Posteris 
 hoc ofius, ab cequalium mconim studiis forte alienum, do, 
 dico\atque dedico." Upon these occasions, one cannot help 
 sharing the apprehension expressed by Voltaire, that the 
 work may never reach the party to whom it is addressed ! 
 
 DESCRIPTION.— A living critic has laid it down as a 
 rule, that no author can succeed in describing what he has 
 not seen, forgetting that Dante was never in hell, nor Milton 
 in Paradise ; and that it is the highest praise of Shakspeare 
 to have " exhausted worlds, and then imagined new." In- 
 ventive writers evince their talent by portraying the invisible 
 and non-existent, snatching a grace, not only beyond the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 119 
 
 reach of art, but beyond the reach of nature. Little right 
 had the critic in question to expect imagination in others, for 
 it is manifest that he possessed none himself. 
 
 DESPONDENCY— ingratitude to heaven, as cheerful- 
 ness is the best and most acceptable piety. H — , who is 
 bilious and hypochondriacal, may be termed a constitutional 
 grumbler. " If my future life," he one day exclaimed, " be 
 only an executed copy, an unheard echo, an invisible reflec- 
 tion of the past, I wish it not to be prolonged. Running 
 after happiness, is only chasing the horizon, or seeking the 
 philosopher's stone, and I am already 
 
 " ' Tired of toiling for the chymic gold, 
 
 That fools us young, and beggars us when old.' " 
 
 D — does not possess the talents of H — , but his bile is 
 never deranged ; he has a fortunate organisation ; he is a 
 happier, and, so far, a wiser man. Like the bee, which ex- 
 tracts honey even from bitter flowers, he can derive cheerful- 
 ness from the most unpromising elements. Are his com- 
 panions gloomy, disagreeable, silent, — he calls forth his own 
 stores of pleasantness, and if he do not succeed in enlivening 
 others, which is but rarely the case, — for good humour and good 
 spirits are often catching, — he finds cause for gratitude that 
 he himself possesses a constant aptitude for the enjoyment of 
 existence, while so many are enacting the part of Terence's 
 Heautontimorumenos. Is the scenery picturesque, it exalts 
 his admiration into rapture : is it flat and commonplace, it 
 still possesses an interest for one who feels that every spot of 
 ground, however unattractive, conduces to some benevolent 
 purpose of utility or enjoyment. Does the sun shine, its 
 jocund beams heighten his natural exhilaration, by lifting 
 up his thoughts to the great Source of all light, solar, as 
 well as intellectual. Is it a rainy day, he sees the out- 
 
120 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 stretched hand of the same beneficent Deity, guiding the 
 clouds over the earth, that they may dispense fertility and 
 gladness to the creatures whom He has called into existence, 
 and around whom He is for ever scattering blessings. I 
 know not how H — may feel upon the occasion, but, for my 
 own part, I would gladly give up whatever I may possess of 
 talent and learning — (deem me not overweening, gentle 
 reader ! for, perchance, I may reckon them as Indians do 
 rupees — by the lack) — I would give them all up, I repeat, to 
 possess the happy disposition of D — . 
 
 DESPOTISM — allowing a whole people no other means 
 of escape from oppression, than by the assassination of their 
 oppressor. If tyranny be an unjustifiable liberticide, may 
 not tyrannicide be termed justifiable homicide ? We moot 
 the point, without presuming to decide it. Despotism, never- 
 theless, has its advantages in a barbarous and ignorant 
 country, where its evils are little felt. Peter the Great, of 
 Russia, could hardly have accomplished so much in civilizing 
 his subjects, if he had not been an absolute monarch. Even 
 among a comparatively enlightened people, such is the force 
 of habit, that a long-established despotism may continue 
 unabated, without being resented by its victims. For two 
 centuries, at least, the French presented the anomaly of a 
 polished, intellectual, enslaved people. Nay, they could 
 record their degradation, and seem to glory in it. The terror 
 of Europe, named par excellence, the Grand Monaj'que, was 
 the puppet of an old woman, the widow of Scarron, the buf- 
 foon, whom he had clandestinely married. " The State is 
 myself," said Louis XIV. ; an ebullition of despotism imitated 
 in our own times by Napoleon ; so besotting is the cup of 
 unlimited power. In its self-punishing operation, it generally 
 weakens the mind, until the enslaver becomes a slave, either 
 to a mistress or a favourite, if not to both. 
 
OR, HEADS AND IaLES. 121 
 
 There is a natural connection between despotic government 
 and depraved manners, — free governments and comparative 
 purity. Free institutions not only open to the rich higher 
 and more worthy objects of ambition than the gratification 
 of the senses, but operate as a wholesome restraint upon the 
 upper ranks, by making them dependent, in some degree, 
 on the good opinion of the lower classes. Where character 
 is power, we have the best security for general morality. 
 
 Perhaps the worst thing ever uttered by Madame de Stael, 
 was her speech to the Emperor of Russia : — " Sir, your cha- 
 racter is a constitution for your country, and your conscience 
 its guarantee ; " nor is there a better kingly speech upon 
 record than his reply, — " Even if it were so, I should never 
 be anything more than a lucky accident." 
 
 DESTINY — the scapegoat which we make responsible 
 for all our crimes and follies ; a necessity which we set 
 down for invincible, when we have no wish to strive 
 against it. 
 
 DIET — the edibles and potables that we turn into blood 
 and bone — the matter that we metamorphose into mind. 
 — " Sir," said Bentley to one of his pupils, who had a pre- 
 dilection for malt liquor — " if you drink ale you will think 
 ale ; " and there was more truth in the averment than might 
 at first sight be imagined, for body and mind must assimi- 
 late, to a certain extent, with that which sustains them. 
 Look at the difference of disposition between the carnivorous 
 and graminivorous animals : the latter, who seem to be 
 nature's unweaned favourites, are peaceful as the bosom 
 upon which they browse ; the former, doomed to be con- 
 stantly tearing one another, and to live by blood and 
 slaughter, are constitutionally savage and ferocious. Varieties 
 of temperament in animals will often be found to have re- 
 
122 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 ference to the different food in which each race delights, 
 and it is by no means improbable that the national character 
 of human societies may be modified by their favourite diet. 
 The taste of each, taking that word in its most extended 
 acceptation, may be traceable to the palate. The supple- 
 ness and levity of the Italian may be derived from maccaroni 
 and vermicelli ; Dutch phlegm and obstinacy, from flat-fish, 
 water-zootje and schiedam; German acerbity, mysticism and 
 melancholy, from sour-krout, sausages, and vin de grave; 
 the insubordination of the Irish peelers and repealers, from 
 potatoes; French levity and vivacity, from ragouts and 
 champagne ; and the solid but somewhat crude and uncivi- 
 lized character of John Bull, from his feeding upon huge 
 joints of underdone beef. 
 
 Potables have a more immediate effect upon the formation 
 of character than Edibles, because we like them better, and 
 therefore sympathise with them more intimately. In vino 
 Veritas, saith the proverb : intoxication is thought to draw 
 forth the real character ; but this is a mistake ; it creates 
 instead of developing. Ebriety varies not with the man, 
 but with the liquor. That of ardent spirits is fierce, mad- 
 dening, and pugnacious ; of strong beer, stupifying and 
 somniferous ; of port and heady wines, fond, maudlin, hic- 
 coughing, and heavy; of champagne, gay, noisy, vivacious, 
 shrieking, and saltatory. I have heard an old naval captain 
 declare that, during the late war, a complete change was 
 produced in the manners of the petty officers, by Sir George 
 Rose's regulation, which substituted duty-free wines for their 
 previous allowance of new rum and grog. When they had 
 indulged a little too freely in the latter, (no very unusual 
 occurrence,) strife, blackguardism, and outrage too often 
 ensued ; a similar excess in wine evaporated in laughter and 
 hugging. "Besides, Sir," added my informant, "when we 
 were drinking our wine, like gentlemen, we felt it incumbent 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 123 
 
 upon us to behave accordingly." Could anything more 
 effectually confirm the doctrine of Bentley? Perhaps the 
 notion was first suggested by his classical studies, and a 
 perusal of the speech wherein Silenus tells the Cyclop that 
 if he eats the tongue of Ulysses, he will acquire all his 
 eloquence. 
 
 DILEMMA for the doctors. — Complaint having lately 
 been made in a Yorkshire hospital, that an old Hibernian 
 would not submit to the prescribed remedies, one of the 
 committee proceeded to expostulate with him, when he 
 defended himself by exclaiming — " Sure, your honour, wasn't 
 it a blister they wanted to put upon my back ? and I only 
 tould 'em it was althegither impossible, for I've such a mighty 
 dislike to them blisters, that put 'em where you will, they are 
 sure to go agin my stomach." 
 
 DILEMMA, Logical — a verbal check-mate. Aristotle 
 wishing to refute the opinion of Protagoras, who maintained 
 that there was nothing true in the world, argued thus : — 
 " Your proposition is either true or false ; if it is false we 
 are not, of course, bound to believe it : if it is true, there is 
 such a thing as truth in the world, and consequently your 
 proposition is false." These clinches were once in great 
 favour with the sophists and logicians, but they were never 
 worth the pains bestowed upon them, and have deservedly 
 fallen into oblivion. The puzzling instance given in John- 
 son's Dictionary under the word Dilemma, is recorded by 
 Apuleius, as well as by Aulus Gallius in his Attic Nights. 
 Our special pleading is the last remnant of these verbal 
 quibbles, and the sooner it is exploded the better. The age 
 of words is passing away, as well as the impostures and 
 delusions to which they gave a species of sanction. In- 
 justice, delay, and robbery will no longer be called law; 
 
i2 4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 tithes and bishoprics, Christianity; rotten boroughs, repre- 
 sentation; negro slavery, a mild and happy servitude; or 
 public wrongs, private rights. In exploding these verbal 
 frauds it should be well understood that they may be still 
 practised, if we can reduce the great enemy of mankind to 
 a nonplus, in imitation of the wily friar, who sold his soul 
 to him upon condition that all his debts should be paid. 
 Money was supplied in abundance, until he was extricated 
 from his difficulties ; but when Satan came to claim the soul 
 that was due to him, the friar answered, "Begone, thou 
 swindler ! If I owe thee anything, I am not yet out of debt, 
 and if I do not owe thee anything, why dost thou trouble 
 me?" 
 
 Shrewd and quickwitted was the reply of the miser, 
 who on being requested by a dervish to grant him a 
 favour, said, " On one condition I will do whatever you 
 require." — "What is that?" — "Never to ask me for any 
 thing." 
 
 DINNER — a meal taken at supper time; formerly con- 
 sidered a means of enjoying society, and therefore moderate 
 in expense, and frequent in occurrence ; now given to display 
 yourself, not to gratify your friends ; and inhospitably rare, 
 because it is foolishly extravagant. 
 
 John Bulwer, a quaint writer of the seventeenth century, 
 especially recommends the following three dinner rules : — 
 Stridor denlium — Altum silent mm — Rumor gentium j which 
 has been humorously translated, "Work for the jaws — A 
 silent pause — Frequent Ha — has ! " 
 
 DISCIPLINE, Military— that subordination which is 
 maintained upon the continent by the hope of distinction, in 
 England by the fear of the cat-o'-nine-tails. Nothing is so 
 reluctantly abandoned by despots, whether kings, peda- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 125 
 
 gogues, officers, or magistrates, as any oppressive cruelty, 
 which they imagine to be connected with the maintenance 
 of their authority. A tyrant not only gratifies his malignity, 
 but saves all trouble of argument or proper management, 
 by the use of the whip, which may account for the disgrace- 
 ful floggings still so prevalent in our schools, army and navy. 
 This remnant of a barbarous age must soon pass away, and 
 if our flogging disciplinarians would pass away at the same 
 time, we should all be gainers by their loss. The cat-o'-nine- 
 tails must have as many lives as tails, or it never could have 
 lasted so long. 
 
 DISCONTENT — being unhappy at the non-possession 
 of that, of which the possession would not make us happy. 
 Whence comes it that most men are satisfied with their 
 country, to whatever sufferings its climate may expose them, 
 while few or none are satisfied with their lot ? In the former 
 instance, a man is on a par with his neighbours; in the 
 latter, the mass being necessarily inferior to the few, pride 
 makes them imagine that they are all too low, because they 
 are not all at the top. 
 
 To those who repine at the humbleness of their lot, with- 
 out knowing to what eventual distinctions they may be 
 destined, we recommend a perusal of the apologue with 
 which Addison concludes one of his moral essays. A drop 
 of water falling from the clouds into the ocean, became dis- 
 contented with its insignificance, and complained that in 
 the loss of its identity, it was in fact annihilated. In the 
 midst of these murmurs, it was swallowed by an oyster, 
 became converted, in process of time, into a gem, and finally 
 constituted that celebrated pearl which adorns the top of the 
 Persian diadem. 
 
 DISCOVERY— differs from invention. The former may 
 
X26 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 be accidental, and only makes known that which had pre- 
 viously existed ; the latter implies creation, or, at least, a new 
 combination of old materials. 
 
 To surrender the fair honour of any discovery, by naming 
 it after the reigning monarch, is an absurd act of sycophancy* 
 which the world has too much good sense to confirm. No 
 family ever deserved better of literature and science than the 
 Medici ; and yet the name of the Medician stars, assigned 
 by Galileo to the satellites of Jupiter, never travelled beyond 
 the confines of Tuscany, and was quickly dropped even in 
 that country. At a later date, when the planet Ceres was 
 discovered by Piazzi, it received the royal cognomen of 
 Ferdinandea, an addition never recognised by Europe, and 
 now forgotten everywhere. Botanists have very properly 
 bestowed their own names, or those of their friends, upon 
 the new or exotic plants which they have discovered or im- 
 ported ; nor is it easy to conceive a more pleasing immor- 
 tality than to descend to posterity, enshrined in the petals of 
 a flower, like Hyacinthus, or the supposed child-deity of 
 India. Sir Anthony Ashley, who first planted them in this 
 country, has a cabbage sculptured at his feet upon his 
 monument; a much more honourable trophy than all the 
 herald's mummery, or the emblems of military prowess. A 
 potatoe plant would have afforded the noblest crest for Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, were it not deemed more honourable to 
 destroy our fellow-creatures in war, than to minister to their 
 gratification and support in peace. 
 
 DISEASE, A new and fatal. — During the prevalence 
 of the cholera in Ireland, a soldier hurrying into the mess- 
 room, told his commanding officer that his brother had been 
 carried off two days ago by a fatal malady, expressing his 
 apprehensions that the whole regiment would be exposed to a 
 similar danger in the course of the following week. "Good 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 127 
 
 heavens ! " ejaculated the officer, " what then did he die of ? " 
 " Why, your honour, he died of a Tuesday." 
 
 DISSENT. — When upon honest conviction, a man rejects 
 the faith in which he has been educated, he at least affords a 
 proof that he has inquired into its truth, which is by no 
 means the case with nine-tenths of the religious world, who 
 take up their father's creed, like his name, as a mere matter of 
 course. " He who has inquired, and come to a wrong con- 
 clusion," says the pious Locke, " is in a more gracious state, 
 in the sight of heaven, than he who is in the right faith, not 
 having inquired at all ! " 
 
 DISSENTER — one who refuses the communion of the 
 English Church, under the fantastical notion that Christianity 
 may exist without a state religion, an enormously endowed 
 priestly nobility, wealthy spiritual sinecures, pluralities and 
 non-residence, overpaid drones, hunger-pinched workers, 
 and all the other advantages that so happily characterise our 
 established Church. Really these non-conformists are the 
 most unreasonable people upon earth ! Who but a captious 
 puritan would, for such trifling objections as these, undertake 
 the burthen of supporting two churches, shut himself out 
 from all the tempting flesh-pots of Egypt, from benefices, 
 dignities, rich revenues, college education, professorships, 
 and the innumerable fat things that may be scrambled for 
 within the golden pale of episcopacy ? For such a perverse 
 self-denial there is but one way of accounting ; the man 
 
 who practises it must be neither more nor less than 
 
 conscientious ! 
 
 Causes quite independent of discipline or doctrine must 
 furnish a continual increase to the Dissenters. " In an in- 
 tellectual pursuit of the highest order, there is a rivalry 
 between two classes, one feeling itself dependent for success 
 
128 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 upon talents, zeal, piety, perseverance, and good conduct ; 
 the other being independent of all these stimulants, if they 
 choose to disregard them, and supported in their office by the 
 force of law, by nomination of patrons, by succession, by 
 simonaiacal or allowed purchase, by any power or preference, 
 in short, except that of their flocks. In such a contest for 
 opinion and favour, putting differences of doctrine out of 
 view, there can be little doubt which must ultimately prevail. 
 The law will uphold the Church, and the people will uphold 
 the chapels, until they become tired of supporting both, when 
 they will determine on paying that clergyman alone, by whose 
 services they benefit." To this consummation have the Irish 
 dissenters already been driven by spiritual oppression ; and 
 as their English brethren are in a precisely similar predica- 
 ment, it is not difficult to foresee that they will, ere long, do 
 themselves the same justice. A plethora of dignities and 
 wealth, combined with an atrophy of merits and followers, 
 can never be symptoms of longevity in any Church, however 
 firmly it may seem to be established. 
 
 DISTINCTION— with a difference.—" I have no objec- 
 tion," said a leveller, " that the ranks below me should be 
 preserved just as they are now, but I wish to have none above 
 me ; and that is my notion of a fair and perfect equality." 
 
 An instance of the distinction without a difference was 
 offered by the Irishman who, having legs of different sizes, 
 ordered his boots to be made accordingly. His directions 
 were obeyed ; but, as he tried the smallest boot on his largest 
 leg, he exclaimed, petulantly, " Confound the fellow ! I 
 ordered him to make one larger than the other ; and, instead 
 of that, he has made one smaller than the other." 
 
 DISTINCTIONS.— It is idle to talk of the abolition of 
 distinctions, for Nature herself has created them. A great 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. ic 9 
 
 and happy change, however, is taking place in our estimate 
 of these honours. Every day adds to our reverence of m- 
 trinsic, and diminishes our respect for ^.rtrinsic superiority. 
 Patents of nobility, signed by the hand of God, are rising in 
 general esteem, while those merely signed by the hand of a 
 king are declining. Hereditary distinctions, whether of an 
 exalting or degrading aspect, generally deteriorate their 
 objects. It was once questioned, whether a villein, or serf, 
 could enter heaven, and the very doubt rendered him unfit 
 for it, just as the certainty of succeeding to honours often 
 disqualifies their inheritor from wearing them becomingly. 
 
 DISTRESS — even when positive or superlative, is still 
 only comparative. " Such is the pressure of the times in 
 our town," said a Birmingham manufacturer to his agent in 
 London, " that we have good workmen who will get up the 
 inside of a watch for eighteen shillings." — " Pooh ! that is 
 nothing, compared to London," replied his friend ; — " we have 
 boys here who will get up the inside of a chimney for 
 sixpence ! " 
 
 DIVINITY. — If the real divinity within our souls were not 
 more pure and consoling than the false one which fanatics 
 create, how deplorable would be the lot of human nature ! 
 Happily, we cannot altogether get rid of the internal God, 
 even by worshipping an external daemon. The mercy of the 
 Heavenly Father is indefeasible; we may desert Him, but He 
 will not utterly desert us. 
 
 DRAM — a small quantity taken in large quantities by 
 those who have few grains of sobriety, and no scruples of 
 conscience. Horace Walpole records, that when one of his 
 contemporaries died, in consequence, as it was currently said, 
 of an over-addiction to brandy, the escutcheon affixed to the 
 
 K 
 
i 3 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 house of the deceased exhibited the common motto of u Mors 
 jantia vitcej " upon which a wag observed — " Surely there 
 has been a mistake in this inscription : it should have been 
 1 Mors aqua vitoe. } " 
 
 DRAMA, Modern — every sort of drama, except tragedy 
 and comedy ; — such as melo-drama, hippo-drama, &c. 
 
 DRAWING. — This most moral of all accomplishments, as 
 Goethe terms it, is, at the same time, the most delightful ; 
 almost endowing its possessor with an additional sense. A 
 landscape is the silent voice of nature, speaking in forms and 
 colours ; and the artist who can reduce these vocal visions to 
 painted writing, has a companionship with the outward world, 
 an enjoyment of its beauties, and a consequent sweetness in 
 his communion with its great Creator, of the most hallowing 
 and enviable description. He who can thus read the face of 
 nature, or listen to her inaudible effusions, may indeed be 
 said to find 
 
 " Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
 
 DREAMS — the invisible visions to which we are awake 
 in our sleep ; the life of death ; the sights seen by the blind ; 
 the sounds heard by the deaf ; the language of the dumb ; 
 the sensations of the insensible ; a mystery which may 
 afford us some vague notion of the undeveloped powers of 
 the human mind, waiting, perhaps, the longer sleep of death, 
 before they receive a full expansion. Objects thus presented 
 to us can only be a wild combination, we are told, of those 
 with which we have been previously conversant ; but in these 
 revelations, there seems to be an occasional apocalypse of 
 another world, or, at least, a different state of being from our 
 present existence. What are the prevalent dreams of persons 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 131 
 
 born blind? This subject has not excited inquiry, but it 
 seems of a nature to deserve it, as it might lead to some very- 
 curious results. Are forms and figures presented to them, 
 either animate or inanimate, and if so, do they bear any 
 resemblance to their originals ? Everything thus flitting 
 before the mind's eye must be a creation, not a recollection, 
 to him who can only have gathered vague notions of form 
 from the touch, and can have no idea of colour. The dreams 
 of maniacs, could they be detailed, would supply matter for 
 not less interesting speculation. We may imagine them to 
 embody forth all that is gorgeous, magnificent, rapturous, and 
 paradisaical ; or to evoke the most hideous and terrific 
 phantasmagoria, according to the different moods of their 
 madness. Somnambulism, which may be termed an inter- 
 mediate affection between dreaming and insanity, would also 
 present many mental diagnostics, of the most curious 
 character, could we " observingly distil them out." 
 
 It has been asserted by medical writers, who have atten- 
 tively considered the subject, that our senses and organs 
 sink to sleep in the following succession : — 1st, the sense of 
 sight ; 2nd, the taste ; 3rd, the smell ; 4th, the hearing ; 5th, 
 the touch. The powers of the mind may, in the meantime, 
 be inert, active, or deranged, according to circumstances ; 
 but they are never altogether coherent. The two principal 
 theories of dreams suppose them to originate wholly in direct 
 impressions on the senses during sleep ; or to be ascribable 
 to the supremacy of the mind, which, being unfettered by 
 objects of sense, takes a wider range. According to this 
 latter supposition, how inconceivably eccentric and illimitable 
 may be its flight, when it is released from its earthly tegu- 
 ment, and revels in the boundless wilds of imagination, as a 
 liberated balloon soars into the invisible empyreum ! 
 
 To illustrate the total absence of judgment in all these 
 phantasms, Dr. Johnson used to relate the following dream. 
 
132 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 He imagined himself to be engaged in a contest of wit, 
 before a large literary party, with an adversary whose supe- 
 rior talents compelled him to retreatj filled with shame and 
 mortification. " Had my judgment," argued the Doctor, 
 " been as clear and active as my other mental powers, I 
 should have recollected that my own head had furnished all 
 the repartees of my supposed antagonist, and that I could 
 not fail to be the victor, however the battle might ter- 
 minate." 
 
 An exceedingly corpulent man, who had suffered much 
 from the intense heat of summer, dreamt, one sultry night, 
 that, for the sake of cooling himself, he got out of his flesh, 
 and sate in his skeleton, suffering the air to blow through his 
 ribs ; a mode of refrigeration which he found so delicious, 
 that on awaking he could almost have cried, like Caliban, to 
 fall asleep again. 
 
 DRESS — external gentility, frequently used to disguise 
 internal vulgarity. Wise men will neither be the first to 
 adopt a new fashion, nor the last to abandon an old one ; for 
 an affectation of singularity is only the desire to set, instead 
 of following, the mode. Eccentricity of appearance is the 
 contemptible ambition of being personally known to those 
 who do not know you by name. We may hold it slavish to 
 dress according to the judgment of fools, and the caprice of 
 coxcombs ; but are not we ourselves both, when we are 
 singular in our attire ? Mean indeed, though, doubtless, 
 very just, must be the self-opinion of that man, who can 
 only hope to achieve distinction by the cut of his garments. 
 The proverb tells us, to cut our coat according to our 
 cloth ; but we are nowhere enjoined to cut out a character 
 by a coat. 
 
 Malvezzi says — " i vestimenti negli animali sono molto 
 securi scgni delta lo?-o natiwa; negli uomini del lor cervello" 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 133 
 
 This may be illustrated by rags as well as finery. Socrates 
 told Antisthenes, who affected shabbiness, that he saw his 
 pride through the holes in his coat ; and the gay attire of 
 the coxcomb only serves to prOve the more clearly, that he is 
 " a leaden rapier in a golden sheath " — a cork leg in a silken 
 stocking. 
 
 DRUNKENNESS — a beastly, detestable, and often 
 punished vice, in the ignorant lower orders, whose ebriety is 
 thrust upon the public eye as they reel along the streets, — 
 but softened into " a glass too much," or being " a little 
 elevated," when a well-educated gentleman is driven home in 
 his own carriage, in a state of insensibility, and put to bed 
 by his own servants. The half-starved wretch, who finds in 
 casual intoxication meat, drink, clothing, fuel, and oblivion, 
 may be fined, or put in the stocks, because he cannot afford 
 to conceal his offence ; but the bon vivant, whose habitual 
 intemperance has none of these excuses, shall escape with 
 impunity, because he sins in a dining, instead of a tap-room. 
 " A drunkard," says Sir Edward Coke, " who is a voluntary 
 madman, hath no privilege thereby ; " — but he should have 
 added, except he be a gentleman in station. To the credit 
 of modern manners, it must be admitted that the two cha- 
 racters are now hardly ever found united. 
 
 Droll, though not very logical or conclusive was the reply 
 of the tipsy Irishman, who, as he supported himself by the 
 iron railings of Merrion Square, was advised by a passenger 
 to betake himself home. " Ah now, be aisy ; I live in the 
 square ; isn't it going round and round, and when I see my 
 own door come up, won't I pop into it in a jiffey ? " 
 
 DUELLING, How to avoid. — This desirable immunity 
 may be accomplished by a pleasanter method than by 
 plagiarising Mr. O'Connell's oath, — videlicet, by falling in 
 
i 3 4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 love, when you may decline a challenge after the following 
 fashion of one of our old amatory poets — 
 
 " 'Tis not the fear of death or smart, 
 
 Makes men averse to fight, 
 
 But to preserve a tender heart, 
 
 Not mine but Celia's right. 
 
 " Then let your fury be supprest, 
 Not me, but Celia, spare, 
 Your sword is welcome to my breast, 
 When Celia is not there.", 
 
 DUELLIST — a moral coward, seeking to hide the pusil- 
 lanimity of his mind, by affecting a corporeal courage. In- 
 stead of discharging a pistol, the resort of bullies and 
 bravoes, the really brave soul will dare to discharge its duty 
 to Go4 and man, by refusing to break the laws of both. He 
 is the true hero who can exclaim in the sublime language of 
 Voltaire, " Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et je n y at d'autre 
 crainte" 
 
 DULNESS — Do not see the present work. — "I cannot 
 exactly perceive the scope of your argument, and therefore I 
 cannot adopt your opinion," said a gentleman with whom 
 Dr. Parr had been arguing. " Then, Sir," said the doctor, 
 " I can only say that you have the dulness of lead without 
 
 its malleability." Serjeant K having made two or three 
 
 mistakes, while conducting a cause, petulantly exclaimed, 
 " I seem to be inoculated with dulness to-day." " Inocu- 
 lated, brother ? " said Erskine, " I thought you had it in the 
 natural way." 
 
 DUMBFOUNDER — a verbal checkmate which incapa- 
 citates your adversary from making another move of his 
 jaws. " I do not write for fools," said a boastful and asinine 
 
" OR, HEADS AND TALES. 135 
 
 pretender to literature : " I only wish to please those who 
 have the same taste as myself, and to do this, every leaf that 
 I produce must be full of point. Such being my feelings, 
 what would you have me give to the world ? " " Thistles ! p 
 replied a wag. 
 
 Dr. Parr was celebrated for the unsparing severity with 
 which he could deal out his dumbfounders, when the occa- 
 sion justified their infliction. A flippant chatterer, after 
 having spoken slightingly of the miracles, exclaimed, "Well 
 but, Doctor, what think you of the mark of the cross upon 
 the ass's back, which they say indicates the precise spot 
 where the animal was smitten by Balaam?" — "Why, Sir," 
 replied the doctor, " I say that if you had a little more of the 
 cross, and a good deal less of the ass, it would be much 
 better for you." Upon another occasion, a shallow smatterer 
 tauntingly asked him why he did not write a book : — " Sir, I 
 know a method by which I might soon write a very large 
 one." "Ay, Doctor! how so?" "Why, Sir, by putting in 
 all that I know, and all that you do not know." 
 
 DUTY — financially, a tax which we pay to the public 
 excise and customs ; morally, that which we are very apt to 
 excise in our private customs. " Les hommes" says Vol- 
 taire, " se piquent toujours de remfilir tin devoir qui les dis- 
 tingue? If singularity be a distinction, they might easily 
 attain it by a conscientious discharge of religious and moral 
 duty. 
 
 DUTY, Parental — sometimes consists in making our 
 children a stalking-horse for our own failings and vices. Of 
 all the virtuous disguises which self-love is made to assume, 
 the most accommodating, the most sanctimonious, the most 
 demure-looking, is the mask which gives to us the appear- 
 ance of loving others. 
 
136 THE TIN TRUMPET ; 
 
 The avaricious man, the gambling speculator, the fraudu- 
 lent dealer have all the same plausible excuse ; they are 
 making fortunes for their children, which, however, they 
 never give to them, when acquired, until the hand of death 
 wrenches the booty from their grasp. It is remarkable too, 
 that many of the loving fathers who boast what great things 
 they are thus doing for their offspring, are the last to do 
 small things for them, refusing them the most trivial indul- 
 gence, ruling them with a rod of iron, and making them at 
 one time the stalking-horse, and at another the scape-goat of 
 their own humours and propensities. Oh ! how pleasant is 
 it when the affectionate parent can in this manner throw 
 a garb of goodness over his evil passions, and sin with a 
 safe conscience ! 
 
 AR, Pleasures of the — the most spiritual of 
 all enjoyments, the least sensual of the senses. 
 Where can its sensibilities be so well cultivated, 
 and impart such a hallowing character to de- 
 light, as amid the various and exquisite har- 
 monies of nature, the vocal fields, the rustling woods, the 
 deep-mouthed and sonorous sea? Let each of these pleasant 
 sounds, as it falls upon the drum of the ear, be as a reveille, 
 calling upon our thoughts to arise, and be wafted heaven- 
 ward upon the symphonious air. These are the feelings that 
 make all music sacred. No wonder that the deaf are often 
 morose and dejected, while the blind, shut out as they are 
 from the world, almost invariably draw in cheerfulness 
 through the ear. 
 
 EATING and DRINKING— supplying the lamp of life 
 with cotton and oil. "The proverb's somewhat musty," but 
 it cannot be too often repeated that we should " eat to live 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 137 
 
 not live to eat," for if we make the stomach a cemetery of 
 food, the body will soon become the sepulchre of the soul. 
 
 " Pone gulae metas, ut sit tibi longior aetas," 
 
 whether in this world or the next : for to make a god of your 
 belly, is to sell yourself to the devil. 
 
 One half of mankind pass their lives in thinking how they 
 shall get a dinner, and the other in thinking what dinner 
 they shall get ; and the first are much less injured by occa- 
 sional fasts, than are the latter by constant feasts. 
 
 ECHO — the shadow of a sound — a voice without a 
 mouth, and words without a tongue. Echo, though repre- 
 sented as a female, never speaks till she is spoken to, and at 
 every repetition of what she has heard, continues to make it 
 less, an example recommended to the special imitation of. 
 chatterboxes and scandal-mongers. 
 
 ECONOMY — a pauper without a parish, whom no one 
 will own or adopt, unless compelled by necessity. It has 
 long since been driven out of every rich house, while the 
 churchwardens and overseers take good care that it shall 
 never be admitted into the poor-house. Government, after 
 having long turned a deaf ear to its remonstrances, must 
 take it up, or the government itself must break down.* 
 
 EDUCATION, Modern — a game of cross purposes. 
 " Aujourdhui? says Montesquieu, "noiis recevons trots educa- 
 tions differentes ou contraires j celle de nos fteres, celle de nos 
 
 * Had the author lived, he would doubtless have been gratified to find 
 that this article — thanks to the patriotic exertions of the Whig Govern- 
 ment—was no longer applicable, either to our parochial or national 
 expenditure. — Ed. 
 
e 3 8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 maitres, celle du monde. Ce qu'on nous dit dans la derniere, 
 renverse toutes les idees des premieres. Cela vient en qtielque 
 fiariie, du contraste quHl y a fiarmi nous, entre les engage- 
 mens de la religion et ceux dti monde, chose que les anciens ne 
 connaissaient pas." Every one's experience and observation 
 must have confirmed the truth of this averment. At five 
 years of age, the father begins to rub the mother out of his 
 child ; at ten, the schoolmaster rubs out the father ; at 
 twenty, the college rubs out the schoolmaster ; at twenty- 
 five, the world rubs out all its predecessors, and gives us a 
 new education, till we are old enough to take reason and 
 religion for our pastors, when we employ the rest of our lives 
 in unlearning all that we had previously learnt. The universe 
 is the best university, for it teaches us to forget a great 
 portion of what we have acquired at all the others. 
 
 When most of our colleges and public schools were founded, 
 a knowledge of Latin and Greek was the paramount deside- 
 ratum, not only because the classics were the fashionable 
 study, but because all learning and science, whether ancient 
 or contemporary, was confined to those tongues. The 
 scholars, moreover, were mostly intended for the professions, 
 an object which rendered a knowledge of Latin indispens- 
 able, the Bible and the Church service, the law and the law 
 proceedings, as well as the mysteries of medicine, being locked 
 up in that language. All this is now totally changed : the 
 classics are accessible in a variety of excellent translations, 
 — Literati publish in the language of their respective coun- 
 tries, — and the professions, with the solitary exception of 
 medical prescriptions, which may be, and are learnt by heart, 
 without the least knowledge of Latin, are all carried on in 
 English. And yet under circumstances diametrically oppo- 
 site, our educational system remains precisely the same, and 
 boys, at a costly sacrifice of toil and suffering, waste several 
 of the most precious years of life in laying up stores for 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 139 
 
 oblivion, in composing nonsense verses, which they have the 
 good sense to forget as rapidly as they can, and in acquiring 
 a mere smattering of Latin and Greek, which not one in a 
 hundred retains after he has embarked in the business or 
 pleasures of life. Nothing has so completely survived its 
 original aims and intentions, and nothing therefore so impe- 
 ratively demands a thorough reform, as our scholastic and 
 collegiate establishments. Aware of this fact, the founders 
 of the London University have given it a system much better 
 adapted to the spirit and the wants of the times. Modern 
 and foreign literature are cultivated under able teachers ; 
 lectures are delivered on a variety of useful subjects, totally 
 neglected at our old institutions ; and professorships have 
 been established for every branch of science with which an 
 accomplished gentleman ought to be conversant. 
 
 It is remarkable, that while our sons continue to be 
 educated at our old colleges and public schools upon the 
 same system that existed several hundred years ago, the 
 tuition of our daughters has undergone a total change. For 
 housewifery, formerly the one thing needful, we have sub- 
 stituted the accomplishments which, however ornamental 
 and attractive, are scarcely more enduring than the nonsense 
 verses of the boy. After a ridiculous waste of money and 
 time upon a French dancing-master, the pupil is told, upon 
 her coming out, that as nothing is so vulgar as to dance, she 
 must forget all her saltatory lessons, and walk through a 
 quadrille as quietly as possible. At a not less costly outlay, 
 she is taught by an Italian to sing a Bravura ; but if colds, 
 sickness, or time do not lay siege to her voice, she is sure to 
 lose it when she marries, for few indeed retain their accom- 
 plishments after they have answered their purposes of pro- 
 curing a husband. Thus successfully do they rival their 
 brothers, by forgetting in two or three years, what it has 
 required eight or ten to drill into them. 
 
140 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 As a proof how little a college education, even when it has 
 been most successfully prosecuted, qualifies a man for the 
 business and duties of the world, it has been ascertained 
 that very few of those who take their degrees with the 
 greatest eclat, have ever attained any subsequent eminence. 
 In Archdeacon Wrangham's Sertwn Cantabrigiense — pri- 
 vately printed, Malton, 1824, is a list of those who took 
 honours at Cambridge from 1754 to 1823. Of two thousand 
 nine hundred names thus registered, hardly any in after 
 life obtained the smallest distinction. Even of the seventy 
 senior wranglers, very few became afterwards known. So 
 much for university tests of talent ! 
 
 Even the partisans of the old system, with all its cherished 
 ineptitudes, are but the blind instruments for advancing that 
 of which they would fain arrest the march. Rough-hew their 
 purposes how they will, individuals, classes, nations, are all 
 receiving an unconscious education, over which they have 
 little control, from the divine Schoolmaster, who, looking 
 upon the whole human race as his scholars, and generations 
 as his successive classes, is preparing us, by the gradual deve- 
 lopment of our energies and talents, for that loftier position 
 in the scale of existence, to which man is eventually destined. 
 
 EFFECTS — do not always result from causes, as many a 
 lawyer, whose bill remains unpaid, knows to his cost. A 
 suitor for the hand of a young lady at Harrogate, had been 
 repeatedly warned that she was of a violent and ungovernable 
 temper, but persisted in attributing the information to envy 
 or mistake. — " At length," said the lover, relating his mishap 
 to a friend, " I got into an argument with my dear Maria 
 about a mere trifle, when she so far forgot herself, in a 
 moment of passion, as to throw a cup of tea in my face." 
 " And what was the effect ? " inquired his auditor. — " Oh ! 
 Unit completely opened my eyes ! " 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 14 r 
 
 " I was rather hot at the moment," said a man when asked 
 how he came to commit an assault, " and so I struck the 
 fellow." Here was an instance of an effect before a cause. 
 Percussion generally produces heat, but in this case the heat 
 produced the percussion. 
 
 EFFEMINACY — wearing moral petticoats. A mascu- 
 line woman is much more endurable than an effeminate man ; 
 for, though both are abandoning their proper sphere, the 
 former seeks to rise above, the latter to sink beneath, it. 
 There is an ambition about the one, which, though it may- 
 be offensive, does not move our scorn ; whereas there is a 
 pitiful meanness in the other, which always renders it 
 contemptible. 
 
 Even among our senators, we have ringleted effeminates, 
 whom Nature, evidently designing them for barbers, supplied 
 with ready-made blocks, giving them, at the same time, the 
 tonsorial loquacity that enables them to speak to everything 
 — except the point, and to cut everything — except a joke. 
 Let them wield the comb, and leave the making of laws to 
 others ; let them braid their hair, and cease to upbraid 
 reformers ; let them abstain from Parliament, over the doors 
 of which should be inscribed the words of Ovid — 
 
 11 Sint procul a nobis juvenes ut faemina compti." 
 
 Let them perpend the following passage of Seneca — " Horum 
 quis est, qui 11011 malit rempublicam turbari, quam comam 
 suam ? qui non sollicitior sit de capitis sui decore, quam de 
 salute generis humani?" — "Which of these effeminates 
 would not rather see the State thrown into disorder than 
 his hair ? Which of them is not more anxious about the 
 becoming arrangement of his curls, than the welfare of the 
 whole human race ? " 
 
142 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 EGOTISM— suffering the private I to be too much in the 
 public eye. We are offended at the arrogance of Cardinal 
 Wolsey's ego et rex meusj but there is a species of egotism 
 so dignified and noble, that in the elevation which it gives to 
 our common nature, we lose all sense of individual presump- 
 tion. — Such is the character of the following passage from 
 Milton :— 
 
 " For the world, I count it not as an inn but a hospital ; 
 and a place not to live but to die in. The world that I 
 regard is myself. It is mine own frame that I cast mine eye 
 on ; for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it 
 round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon 
 my outside, perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err 
 in my altitude, for I am above Atlas his shoulders. The 
 earth is a point, not only in respect of the heavens above us, 
 but of that heavenly and celestial part within us. That mass 
 of flesh that circumscribes me, limits not my mind. That 
 surface that tells the heavens they have an end, cannot per- 
 suade me I have any. I take my circle to be above three 
 hundred and sixty. Though .the number of the arc do 
 measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind : whilst 
 I study to find how I am a microcosm, or little world, I find 
 myself something more than the great. There is surely a 
 piece of divinity to us — something that was before the 
 elements, and owing no homage unto the sun. He that 
 understands not this much, hath not his introductions or 
 first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man." 
 
 ELECTION, General — hiring servants at a statute fair, 
 which, however, will never be a fair statute, until it resumes 
 its original triennial form. A general election, like varnish 
 on a faded picture, draws out all the bright spots and favour- 
 able tints of our common nature. How delightful to the 
 philanthropist to contemplate such a galaxy of purity and 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 143 
 
 glory as is then radiant in a thousand speeches and adver- 
 tisements. This is not the moment in which the old Member, 
 who is desirous of remaining as a fixture at St. Stephen's, 
 should be taken at his own valuation ; or when the new 
 candidate should receive implicit credit for his pledges and 
 promises. They who can no longer frank letters, now frank 
 their own praises, which they convey to their constituents 
 without any fear of their being overweight. The candidates, 
 instead of wearing white robes, appear in white characters 
 of their own giving ; they are all immaculate, impeccable. 
 There is a general avalanche of snow-like purity of purpose, 
 and the cardinal virtues are as common as vices at any other 
 time. If we had annual parliaments we should soon reach 
 the Millennium. Pity that men who always represent them- 
 selves so amiably in their speeches, should sometimes mis- 
 represent themselves so lamentably in private, and their 
 constituents in public life ! — If the senatorial dignity could 
 exempt from reproach, as well as from arrest, and the man 
 who cannot make laws for himself, could legislate for a 
 nation, our House of Commons would be no common 
 house. 
 
 ELEVATION — of Station is very often accompanied with 
 depression of spirits. Success disappoints us ; we feel our- 
 selves out of our sphere, and sigh for the lost happiness of 
 our humbler days. "You see how languid the carp are," 
 said Madame de Maintenon to her friend, when looking into 
 a marble fish-pond at Marly : " they are like me — they regret 
 their mud? 
 
 ELOPEMENT — beginning in disobedience that which 
 generally terminates in misery. 
 
 EMBALMING — making a flesh statue; — eternalising a 
 
144 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 corpse ; — perpetuating the perishable with more pains than 
 we take to save that which is immortal. 
 
 ENDOWMENTS, Church.— See Poison ; but do not 
 see the Bible. An old tradition bears, that when Constan- 
 tine, the emperor, first endowed the Church, a voice was 
 heard from heaven, crying out, " This day is poison poured 
 into her ! " — Whatever may be thought of the tradition, no 
 one can doubt the fulfilment of the prophecy. 
 
 Wherever Religion has been the mother of Wealth, the 
 daughter has invariably devoured the parent. 
 
 ENNUI — a French word for an English malady, which 
 generally arises from the want of a want, and constitutes the 
 complaint of those who have nothing to complain of. By 
 the equalising provisions of nature, the rich, idle, and luxuri- 
 ous, are thus brought down to the level of their seeming in- 
 feriors, and made to envy those who envy them. When this 
 ugly Goliah haunts the mind, he is only to be subdued by 
 exertion and occupation. — "Throw but a stone, the giant 
 dies." Authors have too much to do with printers' devils, to 
 be annoyed with blue devils. They may inflict, but they 
 seldom suffer, ennui. No exorcism for the spleen, and the 
 vapours, like that of the Muse. When Bellerophon went 
 forth to conquer the Chimaera, he mounted Pegasus. 
 
 ENTHUSIASM— that effervescence of the heart, or the 
 imagination, which is the most potent stimulus of our nature, 
 where it stops short of mental intoxication. " Conscience," 
 says Madame de Stael, "is, doubtless, sufficient to conduct 
 the coldest character into the road of virtue ; but enthusiasm 
 is to conscience, what honour is to duty : there is in us a su- 
 perfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beau- 
 tiful, when the good has been accomplished. Our genius 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 145 
 
 and our imagination require to be gratified in this world ; and 
 the law of duty, however sublime it may be, is not sufficient 
 to make us taste all the wonders of the heart and the head." 
 
 ENVY — punishing ourselves for being inferior to our 
 neighbours, If, instead of looking at what our superiors 
 possess, we could see what they actually enjoy, there would 
 be much less envy, and more pity, in the world. 
 
 " The envious man," says St. Gregory, " is made unhappy, 
 not by his own misfortunes, but by the successes of others ; 
 and, on the other hand, he does not enjoy his own good for- 
 tune so much as the misfortunes of his neighbours. "Invidus 
 non suis malis, sed alienis bonis infelix est; et contra, non 
 suo bono sed malts firoximis felix? Our affected contempt 
 of greatness is only an envious attempt to lift ourselves above 
 the great, and thus achieve an imaginary superiority. "Since 
 we cannot attain grandeur," says Montaigne, "let us take our 
 revenge by abusing it." 
 
 The envy that grudges the successes for which it would 
 want the courage to contend, was well rebuked by the French 
 Marshal Lefevre. One of his friends, expressing the most 
 unbounded admiration of his magnificent hotel, and exquisite 
 cuisine, exclaimed, at the end of every phrase, " How fortu- 
 nate you are !" "I see you envy me," said the Marshal ; "but 
 come, you shall have all that I possess at a much cheaper 
 rate than I myself paid for it ; step down with me into the 
 court-yard, you shall let me fire twenty musket shots at you, 
 at the distance of thirty paces, and if I fail to bring you 
 down, all that I have is yours. — What ! you refuse !" said 
 the Marshal, seeing that his friend demurred, — " know, that 
 before I reached my present eminence, I was obliged to 
 stand more than a thousand musket shots, and, sacre! those 
 who pulled the triggers were nothing like thirty paces from 
 me." 
 
 L 
 
145 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 EPICURE. — An epicure has no sinecure; he is unmade, 
 and eventually dished by made dishes. Champagne falsifies 
 its name, when once it begins to affect his system ; his 
 stomach is so deranged in its punctuation, that his colon 
 makes a point of coming to a full stop ; keeping it up late, 
 ends in his being laid down early ; and the bon vivant who 
 has been always hunting pleasure, finds at last, that he has 
 been only whipping and spurring, that he might be the sooner 
 in at his own death ! 
 
 EPITAPHS — giving a good character to parties on their 
 going into a new place, who sometimes had a very bad 
 character in the place they have just left. For the de mor- 
 tuis nil nisi bontim, it would be an improvement to substi- 
 tute nil nisi verumj since the fear of posthumous disrepute 
 would be an additional incentive to living good conduct. No 
 man could pass through a truth-telling churchyard, without 
 feeling the full value of character. 
 
 What can more impressively stamp the evanescency of 
 man and all his works, than an epitaph on a whole nation, 
 which shall afford nearly the sole evidence of its ever having 
 existed? Such are the cinerary urns of the Etruscans, of 
 whose history we have little other record than their tombs, 
 and of whose literature few other remains than their alphabet. 
 A whole empire stat nominis umbra ! The signs have sur- 
 vived the ideas of which they were the symbols : the chisel 
 has outlasted the statue. Volterra, and other great Etruscan 
 cemeteries, may be termed the skeletons of their cities. 
 
 Few more appropriate epitaphs than the common Latin 
 one of " Stim quod eris, fui quod sis" — "I am what thou 
 shalt be, I was what thou art." 
 
 Beloe, in his anecdotes, gives a good punning epitaph on 
 William Lawes, the musical composer, who was killed by the 
 Roundheads. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES, 147 
 
 " Concord is conquer'd ! In this urn there lies 
 The master of great Music's mysteries ; 
 And in it is a riddle, like the cause, 
 Will Lawes was slain by men whose Wills were Laws." 
 
 More witty than decorous was the epitaph composed in 
 the reign of Henry III., for a Sir John Calfe, who died 
 young. — 
 
 " O Deus omnipotens, Vituli miserere Joannis, 
 Quem mors prseveniens noluit esse bovem." 
 
 Sir Christopher Wren's inscription in St. Paul's Church — 
 "Si monumentum quceris, circumsfiice" — would be equally 
 applicable to a physician, buried in a churchyard ; both being 
 interred in the midst of their own works. 
 
 In the epitaph of Cardinal Onuphrio at Rome, there breathes 
 a solemn, almost a bitter conviction of the vanity of earthly 
 grandeur — "Hie jacet umbra, cinis — nihil" — Here lies a 
 shadow — ashes, nothing. There is great tenderness and beauty 
 in the two lines found upon an ancient Roman tomb, supposed 
 to be addressed by a young wife to her surviving husband : 
 
 ' ' Immatura peri, sed tu, felicior, annos 
 Vive tuos, conjux optime, vive meos." 
 
 But a still more simple and affecting epitaph is the follow- 
 ing, translated verbatim from a tomb at Montmartre, near 
 Paris : — " To the memory of M. Jobart, a most excellent 
 husband and father. His inconsolable widow still continues 
 to carry on the grocery business in the Rue St. Denis, No. 
 242, near the Cafe" Chinois." 
 
 EQUAL — that which a man of talent will seldom find 
 among his superiors. As the winds and waters, abrasion 
 and gravitation, are perpetually tending towards a physical 
 
i 4 8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 equalisation, by lowering mountains and filling up valleys, 
 so, in the moral world, does the progress of social improve- 
 ment gradually tend to equalise all ranks, by reducing the 
 higher, and elevating the lower ; a levelling process, equally 
 conducive to the happiness and melioration of both. Civili- 
 zation is, in fact, a gravitation towards that happy medium 
 which is the centre of attraction to the social circle. 
 Almost every man is a loser by being elevated above the 
 sphere to which he is habituated. When the Duke of 
 Orleans proposed to make Fontenelle perpetual President of 
 the Academy of Sciences, his reply was — " Take not from 
 me, my Lord, the delight of living with my equals." 
 
 ERROR of calculation.— The life of nine-tenths of man- 
 kind is a gross error of calculation, since they attach them- 
 selves to the evanescent, and neglect the permanent, accu- 
 mulating riches in a world from which they are constantly 
 running away, and laying up no treasures in that eternity 
 to which every day, hour, minute, brings them nearer and 
 nearer. 
 
 ESPRIT DE CORPS— is a corporate partiality or pre- 
 judice ; a feeling of clanship and confraternity ; a selfishness 
 at second hand, which induces us to prefer the members of 
 our own club, guild, or coterie, not only to others, but to 
 reason and justice. It prefers Plato to truth, even though 
 Plato be personally unknown, provided he belongs to the 
 same clique. Nationality is but esprit de corps on a large 
 scale, selfishness spread over the surface of a whole country; 
 and the propensity sometimes exhibits itself in still more 
 extensive divisions. In hunting or baiting wild beasts, there 
 is a strong feeling of humanity, or, rather, of inhumanity, 
 against bestiality. We sympathise with the basest of our 
 own species, rather than with the noblest of the animal race. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 149 
 
 Among ourselves, there is a sexual esprit de corps, — the men 
 siding with the males, the women with the females ; the 
 single with the single, and the married with the married. Of 
 this latter propensity advantage was taken by an unfortunate 
 Irishman, who, being arraigned for accidentally killing his 
 wife, contrived, by objecting to the bachelors, to procure a 
 jury of married men, when he stated that the deceased, an 
 habitual drunkard, had used the most insulting language at 
 the moment of the fatal occurrence. This appeal came so 
 completely home to the business and bosoms of his auditors, 
 several of whom had not improbably been placed in similar 
 circumstances, that they were presently agreed in their 
 decision, when the foreman coming forward, and addressing 
 himself to the Judge, exclaimed, with a voice and look of 
 great energy — " Please, my Lord, our vardict is — Sarved her 
 right!" 
 
 ESTATE, a landed one for all!— Terra Firma for my 
 money. Well may it be called real property ; there is none 
 other that deserves the name. What are public securities, 
 as they are impudently termed? Ask the impoverished 
 bond-holders of the South American States, or of Greece. 
 Neither their new nor old governments, neither despotism 
 nor republicanism, can give certain tangibility or visibility 
 to that ghost of defunct money yclept a dividend. What 
 will tithes soon be worth in England ? — what they are now 
 worth in Ireland. In ten years, the claim for tenths will be 
 no more observed than are the ten commandments at present. 
 What is the value of houses ? It is notorious that they are 
 everywhere falling, especially the very old ones ; rents threaten 
 to be all peppercorns; house owners will not get salt to their 
 porridge, even if they distrain upon their tenants, and make 
 quarter day a day without quarter. No — give me land. 
 The man who walks upon his own estate carries himself erect, 
 
150 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 and plants his foot upon the ground with an air of confidence 
 and consequence. 
 
 Perhaps I feel this the more sensibly, because I have not 
 a single acre in possession. Nothing, however, can prevent 
 my succeeding to a small estate which I have lately been 
 inspecting. It certainly possesses many advantages, being 
 tithe-free, and the land-tax redeemed. In this snug retreat, 
 which is perfectly sequestered, you are surrounded with 
 wood, and yet close to a populous neighbourhood, to the 
 parish church, and the high road. Its proprietor enjoys 
 several privileges and advantages: he pays no taxes, is 
 exempt from serving in the militia, or sitting upon juries, his 
 privacy is undisturbed by the impertinent intrusion of neigh- 
 bours, he has no cares by day, and he is sure of a sound 
 sleep at night. When a new occupant comes to take pos- 
 session, he usually arrives in a coach and four, with numerous 
 attendants, and he is not only received with bell-ringing, but 
 the clergyman, and a portion of the parishioners, go out to 
 meet him, and escort him home with much ceremony. The 
 house, though it can hardly be called anything better than a 
 mere country box, has so many recommendations, that there 
 is no instance of an occupant quitting it, after he has once 
 given it a fair trial. 
 
 Readers ! whether gentle or simple, you need not envy me 
 my expectations. A similar landed estate is entailed upon 
 every one of you, and upon your children's children. If you 
 want a description of it, refer to Blair's poem of—" The 
 Grave." 
 
 One of the Roman emperors wept that nothing could pre- 
 vent the master of the wide world from being finally impri- 
 soned in an urn. I would counsel some of our landed 
 proprietors — 
 
 " large-acred men, 
 Lords of fat Evesham, and of Lincoln fen " — 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 151 
 
 who, in the pride of their possessions, " bestride the narrow 
 earth like a Colossus," to cast their eyes downwards, if 
 looking upwards will not teach them humility, and to reflect 
 that their huge estates must inevitably shrink into six feet 
 by two ! 
 
 ETYMOLOGY — sending vagrant words back to their 
 own parish. It was said of Menage, that in requiring every 
 word to surrender its passport, he not only inquired whence 
 it came, but whither it was going. 
 
 An ancient grammarian tells us that the Greek word #«, 
 to breathe, consists of alpha and omega, the first and last 
 letters of the alphabet, because to inspire and to expire, form 
 the beginning and ending of man's life. This is a fine 
 instance of forepov irpSrepov, or putting the cart before the 
 horse ; the learned philologist having forgotten that men 
 breathe before they speak, and that languages long preceded 
 the time of Cadmus and the invention of letters and alpha- 
 bets. While upon the subject I may mention that the word 
 sack is found in all languages, which a profound antiquary 
 has explained, by suggesting that it was necessary to leave 
 that primitive word, in order that every man, when he took 
 his departure from the tower of Babel, might ask for his own 
 bag. Titles of dignity, derived from age, seem also to have 
 spread from the same root into a great variety of languages ; 
 our sir, signor, senator, and perhaps seneschal, being iden- 
 tical with the scheik, shah, and aga of the orientals, and 
 the schachem of the red Indians. Titles inferring supe- 
 rior age do not, however, always command our respect,, 
 as, for instance, in the case of our London elder or 
 aldermen. 
 
 Somewhat far-fetched was the conceit* of an erudite etymo- 
 logist, who maintained that the term bag-pipe was originally 
 a Hebrew word, signifying a larger sort of sack-but, sack 
 
i 5 2 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 and bag being synonymous terms, and a butt being half a 
 pipe. 
 
 Learned philologists are very apt to imitate the ignorant 
 butcher, who spent a whole morning in searching for the 
 knife which he held in his mouth — a wild-goose chase, which 
 has been eminently illustrated in their endless wanderings 
 for the origin of the word danger, when it was difficult to stir 
 a step without stumbling over its real etymology. We need 
 not go any further back than the siege of Troy to discover it 
 at once. After the capture of that city, by the well-known 
 stratagem of the wooden horse, an event with which every 
 Roman became familiar, only twelve hundred years after- 
 wards, through the writings of Virgil, it was customary to 
 exclaim, whenever any fraud or trick was suspected, " Danaos 
 gerit ? " — " Are there any Greeks in this pretended horse ? " 
 — meaning any cheat or imposture. The phrase was soon 
 proverbial, and with the habitual indolence of the Italians, 
 was eventually contracted into one word, by taking the in- 
 itial syllable of each ; so that whenever they smelt a rat, as 
 we say in English, or anticipated any perils, they exclaimed, 
 interrogatively, "dan-ger?" Is it not almost incredible, that 
 so obvious a derivation should have been overlooked by the 
 most acute of our etymologists? Henceforth let us hear no 
 more of the butcher and his knife. 
 
 In searching for the signification of words, we are not, 
 however, always to take them au pied de la letire, or we 
 might define a hypocrite to be a judge of horses — a syco- 
 phant, as a fig-seer — a beldam, as a handsome lady — 
 consideration, as a collection of stars — understanding, as a 
 pair of shoes — and sincere as unwaxed. Into these and 
 similar errors, the enlightened etymologist is in no fear 
 of falling, for he will ever bear in mind the fundamental 
 rule of his art, viz., to pay little attention to consonants 
 and none to vowels. Why should letters obstruct him 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 153 
 
 when he is considering things of such importance as 
 words ? 
 
 EXAGGERATION, Intemperate— diminishing by addi- 
 tion, as the word small is made smaller by appending two 
 more letters to it. When a man asserts too much, whether 
 in the shape of praise or censure, we take our revenge by 
 falling into an opposite error, and believe too little. The same 
 effect is often produced by that confusion of ideas or terms 
 which is designated a bull. A Radical, inveighing against 
 the rapacity of the clergy, gave it as his decided opinion, that 
 if they had their own way, they would raise the tithes from 
 a tenth to a twentieth. On the other hand, an intended 
 diminution, by the same figure of speech, may amount to an 
 exaggeration. " I have just met our old acquaintance Daly," 
 said an Irishman to his friend, " and was sorry to see he has 
 almost shrunk away to nothing. You are thin and I am 
 thin, but he is thinner than both of us put together." Did 
 the Hibernian sailor exaggerate or diminish when, in de- 
 scribing the weather, he said, " There was but little wind, but 
 what there was, was uncommonly high." 
 
 EXAMPLE. — It is much more easy to imitate bad example 
 than good, because it has our natural inclination on its 
 side. Perverse natures find a positive gratification in 
 doing wrong. A man of this stamp, who was remarkably 
 fond of pork, once expressed his regret that he had not 
 been born a Jew, in order that he might enjoy the double 
 pleasure of eating his favourite viand, and sinning at the 
 same time. 
 
 EXCEPTIONS — prove every rule, as we are told, except 
 the rule that " every rule has its exception." Nothing can 
 be rendered more exceptionable than an exception, even when 
 
154 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 accompanied with an invidious eulogy. According to Saville, 
 poets are the best of all authors — except prose writers. 
 
 F , defending a kind-hearted unmarried woman, whose 
 
 character, however, was far from immaculate, exclaimed 
 "Out of the pale of marriage and celibacy, I protest that I 
 do not know a more respectable person." Cases may occur 
 where parties are not to be conciliated, either by their inclu- 
 sion or exclusion. " How many fools, including yourself, 
 went to the lecture on phrenology ? " demanded a collegian 
 to his comrade, who, instead of answering the inquiry, took 
 the term applied to him in high dudgeon. — " Well, then," 
 resumed his friend ; " how many fools were there without 
 reckoning yourself ? " 
 
 Under this head we may insert one of the very few jokes 
 attributed to William Pitt. As Lord Warden of the Cinque 
 Ports, he presided at a public meeting, held in Dover, during 
 the war, for the purpose of raising a volunteer corps, when 
 the secretary, in drawing up the conditions on which they 
 were to be embodied, said to the chairman, " I suppose, sir, 
 that I am to insert the usual clause — not to serve out of the 
 country." — " Certainly, certainly," • smiled Pitt, " except in 
 case of invasion ! " 
 
 Few will be unacquainted with Swift's saving clause, when, 
 in his anxiety to promote the products and manufactures of 
 the Irish, he recommended them to burn everything that 
 came from England, except her coals. 
 
 EXCULPATION, A satisfactory.— " My good friend!" 
 exclaimed an enraged author, who had been lampooned and 
 libelled in a review, " I have strong reason to suspect that I 
 
 have received this stab in the dark from that rascal M ." 
 
 — '* Make your mind perfectly easy," said his friend ; 
 
 " M is the last man to give you a stab in the dark ; 
 
 first, because he always held you in light estimation, and, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 155 
 
 secondly, because I know him to be a fellow who would not 
 stick at anything." 
 
 Ingenious enough, though, perhaps, not literally true, was 
 the excuse of the day-boarder, who, being asked one morning 
 why he came to school so late, replied that, owing to the 
 hard frost and the slipperiness of the ground, he had taken 
 two steps backwards for one step forwards. " In that case," 
 inquired the master, " how did you manage to get here at 
 all ? " — " Oh, sir ! I turned about and came the other 
 way." 
 
 EXCUSE — confessing our faults by attempting to excuse 
 them — Qui ^excuse ^accuse. Good intentions, with which, 
 according to Wesley, hell is paved, are no defence of evil 
 actions. We have all of us pleas and evasions enough not 
 only for leaving undone what we ought to have done, but for 
 doing what we ought not to have done. 
 
 A gentleman, who had just put aside two bottles of capital 
 ale to recreate some friends, discovered, just before dinner, 
 that his servant, a country bumpkin, had emptied them both. 
 " Scoundrel ! " said his master, " what do you mean by this ? " 
 — " Why, sir, I saw, plain enough, by the clouds, that it were 
 going to thunder, so I drank up the yale at once, lest it should 
 turn sour, for there's nothing I do abominate like waste." 
 Fuseli, when he failed in any of his serious caricatures, used 
 to complain that Nature put him out : and the sluttish house- 
 maid, when scolded for the untidiness of the chambers, 
 exclaimed, " I'm sure, the rooms would be clean enough, if it 
 were not for the nasty sun, which is always showing the 
 dirty corners." 
 
 EXPEDIENTS — remedies for half our pains and sorrows, 
 did we but know how to find and to apply them. There 
 must, certain!* be a charm in enacting the part of Jaques — - 
 
r56 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 in having " a cue for villanous melancholy," and a " sigh 
 like Tom o' Bedlam." Whether it be that our self-love is 
 gratified by exciting sympathy, or our vanity by being made 
 the subject of conversation, it is unquestionable that we cling 
 to our little ills and ailments as if they conferred a sort of 
 distinction. Never could I entirely agree with the pensive 
 poet when he exclaims — 
 
 " Go ! you may call it madness, folly, 
 You shall not chase my griefs away, 
 
 There's such a charm in melancholy, 
 I would not if I could be gay." 
 
 But I can accord with the French writer, who affirms, that a 
 woman always finds her physician and confessor the most 
 delightful companions in the world, because she is constantly 
 talking to them about herself, her complaints, and her pecca- 
 dilloes. Men are precisely the same in the auricular confes- 
 sions of society, and almost any girl may be sure of winning 
 their affections, provided she be a patient and persevering 
 listener to their aches and annoyances, real or imaginary. 
 This must be the secret reason why we often refuse to avail 
 ourselves of expedients which would effectually remove all 
 our grievances, and which are too palpable to have escaped 
 our notice. A lady, of delicate health, who loved to talk of 
 
 her rheums and rheumatics, complained to S that she 
 
 rarely went out to make purchases without catching cold, 
 because they never kept their shop-doors shut. " My dear 
 
 madam," said S , " how easily you might avoid all this ! 
 
 — You should make it a rule never to go a shopping except 
 on a Sunday." " You sot of a fellow ! " exclaimed a poor 
 woman to her husband: "you are always at the public-house, 
 getting drunk with hot purl, while I am at home with nothing 
 to drink but cold water." — " Cold, you silly jade ! "hiccoughed 
 the husband, " why don't you warm it ? " 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 157 
 
 Strange, that neither of the females should have previously 
 hit upon such obvious and satisfactory expedients ! Infinitely 
 quick and apt in expedients, was the manager of a country 
 theatre, who, when requested, by a lady of rank in the 
 neighbourhood, to get up the play of Henry the VHIth, 
 regretted that the state of his company would not allow it ; 
 but added that they could very well manage to perform the 
 two parts of Henry the IVth, which would come to exactly 
 the same thing. 
 
 EXTEMPORE — a premeditated impromptu. 
 
 EYE-GLASS — a toy which enables a coxcomb to see 
 others, and others to see that he is a coxcomb. 
 
 ABLES — giving human intellects to brutes, in 
 imitation of Nature, who sometimes gives brute 
 intellects to men. 
 
 FACE— the silent echo of the heart 
 
 FAITH. — If all the innumerable false and forgotten 
 faiths, and ail the myriads of men who have contentedly 
 died in their belief, after having spent a long life in hating 
 or persecuting those who disbelieved them, could be pre- 
 sented at once to our apprehension and sight, what a 
 lowering impression would it give of human reason, and 
 how forcibly would it inculcate humility as to our own 
 opinions and toleration towards the opinions of others ! — 
 And this would be the genuine feeling of Christianity, for the 
 Scriptures assure us, more than once, that the Lord "ordaineth 
 his arrows against the persecutors." 
 
e 5 8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 FALSE POINTS.— The author who pays more attention 
 to the manner than the matter of his writings, and excites an 
 expectation by his studied conceits and antitheses, which is 
 not justified by the subject or the sentiment, may be com- 
 pared to an ill-trained dog, which by stopping to make a 
 false point where there are no birds, only makes game of his 
 master. Punning writers are comical dogs of this sort, who 
 often raise our expectation, but seldom enable us to bring 
 down a thought, or put anything into our memory-bag. There 
 are dull dogs, on the contrary, who weary you by beating 
 about the bush, and who seem to make a point of never 
 making a point, even though they may be surrounded by 
 numerous coveys of intellectual game. The writings of 
 Jeremy Bentham constitute a well-stocked preserve of valu- 
 able thoughts, entrenched in such a chevaux de /rise of 
 crooked, crabbed, and impenetrable language, that nobody 
 can get at them. Some one said of his style that it was a 
 five-barred gate with spikes at top, and furze bushes on 
 either side. It is not any known tongue, it is Benthamese, 
 or perhaps a variety of those that sprung up in the hotbed of 
 Mr. Irving's chapel. One cannot defend its obscurity, as 
 Balzac did that of Tertullian, by saying that it resembles the 
 darkness of polished ebony, which throws a certain splendour 
 around. Through such impediments, few men would think 
 of forcing their way, any more than of breaking their teeth 
 with a hickory nut for the sake of the kernel. 
 
 There are conversational dogs, who by making a dead 
 point, as if they were about to start a bon-mot, will induce 
 you to cock your ear and prepare for an explosion of 
 laughter ; after which they leave you miserably in the lurch. 
 Of this a notable instance was afforded by the late facetious 
 Jack Taylor, who became somewhat forgetful towards the 
 close of his career. "Did I ever tell you," he inquired, 
 " of a famous good thing I once said to Du B ? He 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 159 
 
 was alluding to my former occupation of an oculist, in which 
 he said it was no wonder I had failed, since a man must 
 have been blind indeed before he would apply to me. — 
 Well, Sir, that was very good ; but I blew him completely 
 to atoms by a retort I made. I can't recollect just now 
 what it was, but you may depend upon it, my dear friend, 
 it was a most capital thing, and made a great laugh at 
 the time ! * 
 
 A man must be reduced to great straits before he can 
 think of living upon the good things he has forgotten. 
 
 FAME, Literary — being partially known to-day and uni- 
 versally forgotten to-morrow. To what does this posthumous 
 existence amount ? At most it is but a question of one small 
 link in the circular chain of eternity. He who writes in a 
 modern language, is but the suicide of his own fame : scrib- 
 bling on the sand what the next wave of time will obliterate ; 
 he gets a short respite, not a pardon from oblivion ! Every- 
 thing is incessantly passing away, the physical and the moral, 
 the corporeal and the intellectual ; — the very elements of 
 
 nature are subject to decay. Not that this would affect 
 
 as an author, for in his writings there is little or nothing of 
 nature. In one sense they are eternal — " For he who reads 
 them, reads them to no end." Literary fame is more easily 
 caught than kept. If you do nothing you are forgotten, and 
 if you write and fail, your former success is thrown in your 
 teeth. He who has a reputation to maintain has a wild beast 
 in his house, which he must constantly feed, or it will feed 
 upon him. So indifferent was Fontenelle to fame and repu- 
 tation of all sorts, that he is recorded to have said, " If I 
 had a paper in my bureau, the disclosure of which would 
 make my name infamous and detestable for ever, I would not 
 take the trouble to destroy it, provided I could be quite sure 
 that it would never appear in my lifetime." This is pushing 
 
i6o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 indifference into a heartless misanthropy. What can a man 
 have cared for others, who cared so little for himself? 
 
 FANATIC — a religionist, whose irreligious gloom and 
 intolerance are generally ascribable to disease, either bodily 
 or mental. We are told in Scripture, not to be as the hypo- 
 crites, who disfigure their faces ; but the sour miserables, 
 who go groaning and scowling about this beautiful and cheerful 
 world, if they do not literally infringe the precept, seem to 
 steep their countenances in vinegar, as if to preserve them 
 from contagion, and, wearing their hearts in their looks, 
 frown both upon God and man. They are the order of men. 
 of whom Lord Bacon says, that they "bring down the Holy 
 Ghost in the shape of a vulture or a raven, instead of in the 
 likeness of a dove ; and hang from the bark of a Christian 
 Church the flag of a bark of pirates and assassins." They 
 appear to think with their spleen, write with their gall, and 
 pray with their bile ; no wonder, therefore, that they are per- 
 petually canting about " the beauty of sickness." It is at 
 these seasons that the new light flashes upon their cracked 
 sculls ; so true is the averment of Waller, that — 
 
 ' ' The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, 
 Lets in new lights thro' chinks which time has made :" 
 
 and the wittier observation of Swift, that — " When our earthly 
 tabernacles are disordered and desolate, shaken and out of 
 repair, the spirit delights to dwell within them ; as houses 
 are said to be haunted when they are forsaken and gone to 
 decay." The countenances acquired by the mistaken endea- 
 vours of these men to insure themselves against the fires of 
 the next world, remind one of the brazen Gorgons and 
 chimaeras nailed upon our houses, as insurance plates against 
 fire in this world . Some, like the Phcenix, tell us that they 
 are seeking regeneration amid flames and agony ; some, like 
 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 161 
 
 the Pelican, are emblems of the tortures they inflict upon 
 their own breast. 
 
 Fanaticism's flame arises, 
 Like a volcano's, by surprises, 
 Foretells its coming by a grumbling 
 Or inward motion, stir and rumbling, 
 Breaks out at length, and roars hubbubish, 
 Throwing up endless loads of rubbish, 
 With gleams that only show the gloom, 
 And heat that serves but to consume ; 
 And when its baleful sulphurous light 
 Has shed around a withering blight, 
 The fierce, but evanescent flashes, 
 Subside again in smoke and ashes. 
 
 FANATICISM — the daughter of ignorance, and the 
 mother of infidelity. Like every other excess, fanaticism 
 provokes a reaction ; the cold fit of spiritual sickness succeeds 
 the hot one ; and the patients forgetting that the reverse of 
 wrong is not always right, swing to the contrary extreme of 
 profligacy and irreligion. Our English puritans, with their 
 ascetical bigotry, generated the profane licentiousness of 
 Charles the Second's reign, just as the intolerant spirit, and 
 invidious splendours of the French Hierarchy, provoked that 
 anti-religious fanaticism which swept away both the throne 
 and the altar. These are examples from which our Irvingites 
 and our bench of bishops might equally draw instruction, if 
 the voice of the past were not as -an unknown tongue to 
 both parties. 
 
 FASHION — a power as invisible and as despotic as the 
 grand Lama of Thibet. It is said she is a goddess, but no 
 one has ever seen her face, though all aspire to be acquainted 
 with her Proteus forms. Her mandates, of which the origin 
 is utterly unknown, are nevertheless understood and com- 
 
i6 2 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 municated by some inscrutable instinct, and obeyed with a 
 still more inexplicable and unenquiring submission. The 
 rich and the independent are the most eager to become her 
 abject slaves ; and as spaniels are the most fawning, when 
 worst treated, so do her votaries delight in their idol, in pro- 
 portion as her reign is tyrannical, her fancies capricious, and 
 her tastes preposterous. In the service of this fickle and 
 ungrateful despot, who casts off her most faithful followers, 
 unless they will blindly conform to her ever-changing vaga- 
 ries, the timid and delicate willingly encounter pain, the 
 indolent inconvenience and labour, the parsimonious expense. 
 Many leave the tradesman and the tax-gatherer unpaid, that 
 they may voluntarily tax themselves to supply offerings to 
 this mysterious goddess, who finds her strongest supporters 
 among the weak, her most faithful adherents among the 
 inconstant, her warmest admirers among those who admire 
 nothing but themselves. One would not object to the pre- 
 valent notion that whatever is fashionable is right, if our 
 rulers of the mode would contrive that whatever is right 
 should be fashionable. 
 
 FAVOURITES — persons undervalued by the many be- 
 cause they are over-valued by one. — Hatred, however, of 
 favourites is only the love of favour. We dislike them, not 
 because they are unworthy of their elevation, but because we 
 ourselves cannot attain it. Even where their demerits may 
 justify our censure, it proceeds from envy rather than an ab- 
 stract sense of rectitude. In like manner the justice which 
 we refuse to great men when living, and willingly concede to 
 them after death, does not emanate from our love of their 
 virtues, but from our hatred of those who have succeeded to 
 their high offices. We are not less liberal of our praise when 
 it can do no good, than of our abuse when it can annoy and 
 injure. For an exemplification of this double injustice, we 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 163 
 
 may refer to some of our critics. In proportion as they low- 
 ered an author beneath his fair standard while living, they 
 will raise him above it after death, in order to make his sur- 
 vivors look little. Their generosity is all posthumous : they 
 tear the laurels from your head to hang them on your tomb ; 
 they pick your pocket to pay you in post obits ; your wind- 
 ing-sheet is the only one with which they find no fault ; they 
 accelerate your death, and then do their best to make you 
 live. 
 
 " Lafaveur" says La Bruyere, " met Vhomme au dessus de 
 ses egaux, et sa chute au dessous? 
 
 FEAR — a real evil often created by the anticipation of an 
 imaginary one. As we can but be frightened when the danger 
 arrives, our previous terrors are but so much unnecessary 
 addition to the annoyance. They who are most afraid of a 
 cold, or the cholera, are the most likely to catch them : so it 
 is with many other evils, mental as well as bodily. Like the 
 nettle, they only sting the timid ; grasp them firmly and they 
 are innocuous. Fly from them and they pursue you ; face 
 them and they are gone. " The fear of ill exceeds the ill we 
 fear," and there are circumstances in which men have been 
 known to rush headlong into danger, in order to get rid of 
 the intolerable apprehension of it. This is to be terrified out 
 of terror. — Fear is a prodigious magnifier, especially where it 
 has been excited by any unusual object. No traveller ever 
 saw a small wolf; no landsman ever experienced a gale at 
 sea that did not appear to be a tornado : every thing is com- 
 parative. Fear, in short, makes us imitate the silly wheatear, 
 who flies into the fowler's snare, in order to avoid the shadow 
 of a passing cloud. There are occasions, however, upon 
 which no man should fear Fear, for it is the most potent of 
 moralists. 
 
 What anchorites — as my punning friend T. H. justly ob- 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 serves — we all became in England, when our stomachs were 
 literally turned by the fear of the cholera. Esculent vege- 
 tables were pronounced uneatable — even the tailors forswore 
 cabbage : people looked black upon green-peas, and eschewed 
 with horror the salads they once chewed with pleasure. As 
 to fruits, it was fruitless to put them on the table : the dessert 
 was deserted; every apple was a forbidden one; currants 
 were no longer current ; it was dangerous to pare a pear, and 
 still more so to pine for pine. Some forsook their French 
 wines, and took to port, as the only safe harbour; others 
 gave up their spirits at the very moment when they most 
 wanted to keep them up ; and a few paid more than usual 
 attention to their temper, because they had been cautioned 
 against every thing liable to turn sour. 
 
 An inveterate dram-drinker being told that the cholera 
 with which he was attacked was incurable, and that he would 
 speedily be removed to a world of pure spirits, replied, "Well, 
 that's a comfort at all events, for it's very difficult to get any 
 in this world." 
 
 FEE, Doctor's — often the purchase-money for that which 
 the vendor cannot sell. See Fee Simple. A certain Escu- 
 lapian, never known to refuse his golden honorarium, not 
 having received it one morning from a patient whom he had 
 been long attending, affected to be searching about very ear- 
 nestly upon the floor. " What are you looking for, Doctor?" 
 inquired the sick man. " For my fee," was the reply; " not 
 finding it in my hand, I suspect I must have dropped it." 
 "No, Doctor, no; you have made a small mistake; it is I 
 who have dropped it !" 
 
 FEUDALISM — holding lands by tenure of military ser- 
 vice, and thus perpetuating war and usurpation. The spirit 
 and principle of the feudal system being that. of the many for 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 165 
 
 the few, its main pillars are the supremacy of the sword — 
 primogeniture — hereditary nobility — and despotic monarchy. 
 Such are the distinguishing features of the dark ages. The 
 spirit of the present era is federalism, commerce, peace, the 
 principle of the few for the many, and the attainment of the 
 greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, 
 which is silently but surely leading to the modification of 
 primogeniture, the probable suppression, at no distant period, 
 of hereditary legislators, and the encompassment of limited 
 monarchy with republican institutions. England, France, 
 Spain, and Portugal, are assuming the federal form, while the 
 northern states of Europe retain the feudalism, which they 
 were the first to inflict upon the south. 
 
 FICTION, Works ofi — Among other objections to these 
 fascinating productions, it has been urged that they create a 
 habit of feeling pity or indignation, without affording us an 
 opportunity to relieve distress, or resist oppression, and by 
 thus awakening our sympathies to imaginary claims, dispose 
 them to slumber when called upon by real ones. The heart, 
 it is argued, may be softened till it is hardened, as there are 
 metals which acquire a greater induration the oftener they 
 are melted. This ingenious theory is more plausible than 
 true. All our benevolent sympathies will be corroborated by 
 exercise, even when not called forth by any real object, as the 
 archer will strengthen his arm by the practice of shooting 
 into the air, and the soldier by engaging in sham-fights learns 
 how to conduct himself in real ones. To suppose that fig- 
 ments weaken our susceptibility to facts, is to imagine that 
 dreams will unfit us for waking realities, and that smoke is 
 more tangible than solids. If the maintainer of this theory 
 will request some kind friend to throw at his head the most 
 pathetic volume ever written, it may safely be predicted that 
 if it misses him, will make a less sensible 
 
166 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 impression upon his feelings, than the substance, if it hits 
 him. 
 
 FLATTERY, see Flummery. — The hocus-pocus non- 
 sense with which our ears are sometimes cajoled, in order 
 that we maybe more effectually bamboozled and deceived. 
 Unbounded is the respect and politeness with which the 
 practised adulator throws dust in your eyes, when he wants 
 to pick your pocket, or to make a fool of you. A man's 
 flattery, to be really good, ought not only to be as keen as his 
 sword, but as polished. By no means is it so easy a weapon 
 to wield as many people imagine : it is like a flail, which if 
 not adroitly used, will box your own ears, instead of tickling 
 those of the corn. Let it be taken for granted, that while 
 many women will accept a compliment to their beauty at the 
 expense of their understanding, very few will relish a compli- 
 ment to their talents if it derogate from their personal charms. 
 
 Lady G , whose ten lustres have somewhat dimmed the 
 
 lustre of her attractions, consented in a Parisian party to 
 assist in getting up an extemporaneous Proverbe, and to 
 appear as Calypso. In answer to the compliments she re- 
 ceived at the conclusion, she declared that she had done her 
 best, but added, that to represent Calypso properly, one 
 should be young and handsome. " Not at all," said an old 
 General, wishing to be very polite, " your ladyship is a proof 
 to the contrary; nothing could look better from the further 
 end of the Saloon, and nothing could be better acted: as to 
 youth and beauty, the distance supplies all that." " In that 
 case, General ! I wonder that you do not always keep at a 
 distance," was the retort. 
 
 FLOWERS — the terrestrial stars that bring down heaven 
 to earth, and carry up our thoughts from earth to heaven : — 
 the poetry of the Creator, written in beauty and fragrance. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 167 
 
 " He who does not love flowers," says Ludwig Tieg, a Ger- 
 man writer, " has lost all fear and love of God." Another 
 German author defines woman as something between a 
 flower and an angel. 
 
 FOOL. — The Dandy reader may please to see Looking- 
 glass. Folly, nevertheless, has found other defenders than 
 the author of the Encomium Morice, for it has been seriously 
 maintained by a modern writer, that none but a fool will 
 attempt to live without folly, and that the greatest of all 
 follies is to be wiser than others. Let the fool then be com- 
 forted ; he was never guilty of this absurdity. 
 
 FORGIVENESS — is not always the noblest revenge for 
 an injury, since it may proceed from spite, rather than from 
 a generous forbearance. " I never used revenge," says Lord 
 Herbert, of Cherbury, — "as leaving it alway to God, who, 
 the less I punish mine enemies, will inflict so much the more 
 punishment on them." Perhaps his lordship had been read" 
 ing the 25th chapter of Proverbs, where it is said, " If thine 
 enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty, 
 give him water to drink, for then shalt thou heap coals of fire 
 upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee." This may 
 be questionable morality, but it is at all events better to do 
 good with a bad motive, than evil with a good one ; for a 
 virtuous action may benefit many, whereas a wrong feeling 
 can only implicate the single individual from whom it ema- 
 nates. In the former case, too, the example may be imitated 
 without the unworthy impulse ; as in the latter it may be fol- 
 lowed without the redeeming incitement. 
 
 FORTUNE — a blind goddess, who sometimes bestows 
 her smiles upon fools, in order to reconcile men of sense to 
 her frowns; and often runs from the proud, to revisit the 
 
168 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 wretched. — A man of fortune is one who is so unfortunate as 
 to be released from the necessity of employment for the mind, 
 and exercise for the body, the two great constituents of health 
 and happiness ; who has every thing to fear and nothing to 
 hope ; and who consequently pays in anxiety and ennui more 
 than the value of his money. Fortune is painted blind, in 
 order to show her impartiality; but when she cheers the 
 needy with hope, and depresses the wealthy with distrust, 
 methinks she confers the richest boon on the poorest man, 
 and injures those upon whom she bestows her favours. 
 
 Te colimus, Fortuna, Deam, is, nevertheless, the motto to 
 almost every man's conduct, however he may disclaim the 
 confession with his lips ; and few have a more ready excuse 
 for their homage than the Grecian sage, who being asked 
 why philosophers always ran after rich men, while rich men 
 never courted philosophers, replied, " Because the latter 
 know that they want money, while the former do not know 
 that they want wisdom." Who so independent of the blind 
 goddess as the ruined gamester, when he exclaimed, after a 
 run of ill luck, " O spiteful Fortune ! you may make me 
 lose as much as you please, but I defy you to make me 
 pay ! " 
 
 Dryden evinces no great respect for this deity, when he 
 exclaims — 
 
 " Fortune a goddess is to fools alone, 
 The wise are always masters of their own." 
 
 FORTUNE-TELLER — a pickpocket, discerning enough 
 to limit his or her depredations to gulls and simpletons. The 
 girl who told the gipsy by whom she had been promised a 
 large fortune, that she might deduct another sixpence, pro- 
 vided she would realize her prediction, and pay over the 
 remainder of the money at once, little dreamt that she was 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 169 
 
 translating a thought of old Eunius, the Roman poet, who 
 says, speaking of fortune tellers — 
 
 " Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachmam petunt, 
 De divitiis deducant drachmam, reddant coetera." 
 
 It is remarkable that in our aspirations after wealth, we 
 never betake ourselves to the wealthy, who might be the 
 most likely to communicate the secret of its acquisition; 
 but rather lend ourselves to the delusions of the ragged and 
 the starving, whose poverty is the surest proof that they are 
 totally ignorant of the ?7iagnmn arcanum. One must have 
 the ears of Midas to listen to those Avho pretend to possess 
 his touch. 
 
 FOX-HUNTING — tossing up for lives with a fox, and 
 running the risk of being in at your own death, instead of 
 that of the animal you are pursuing. A fox-hunter lays a very 
 fair wager when he pits his own head against an animal's 
 tail. Bull, bear, and badger-baiting are prohibited by the 
 magistrates, if not by law: there is a society for the preven- 
 tion of cruelty to animals, the secretary of which evinces a 
 laudable activity in punishing drovers, coachmen, and car- 
 men, who are unmerciful towards their cattle ; but gentle- 
 men may kill and mangle game, and put stags, hares, and 
 foxes, to a lingering and cruel death, without molestation or 
 impeachment. This may appear an unjust and invidious 
 distinction ; but it must be recollected, that the plebeians are 
 naturally ignorant, and torment their animals to urge them 
 forward, or with some other appearance of excuse ; whereas 
 the gentry are, or ought to be, well-informed, and perpetrate 
 their various cruelties solely for their own pastime and 
 amusement ! 
 
 If a fox-hunter possess the accompaniments of being a 
 toper and a gambler, he may be said to pass his mornings 
 
i 7 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 in running through other people's estates, and his nights in 
 running through his own. 
 
 FREETHINKER.— This word, by a strange abuse of 
 terms, has come to be synonymous with a libertine and a 
 contemner of religion, whereas the best security, both for 
 morality and piety, is a perfect freedom of thought. If it be 
 a reproach to be a freethinker, it must be a merit to think 
 like a slave; and mental bondage, always more degrading 
 than that of the body, must be more honourable than the 
 liberty of both ! The right of examining what we ought to 
 believe, is the foundation of Protestantism, and to deny it, is 
 to revert to the Popish claim of infallibility. We may as 
 well suppose a man can reason without thinking at all, as 
 reason without thinking freely ; and it has been maintained, 
 even by dignitaries of the Church, that a verbal, uninquiring 
 assent even to a truth, is less meritorious than the con- 
 scientious error which is the result of patient investigation. 
 If thought is to be restricted, or excluded altogether from 
 the consideration of the most important of all subjects, it 
 necessarily follows, that idiots, and irrational beings, are as 
 competent to decide upon them as the most enlightened 
 philosophers ; a reductio ad absurditm, which we commend 
 to the attention of the mind-chainers. Those are the real free- 
 thinkers, using the word in its most invidious sense, who 
 imagine that the unshackled exercise of man's noblest and 
 most distinguishing attribute, can ever lead to any other 
 results than a still more deep, and more soul-felt conviction 
 of the greatness, goodness, and glory of its divine Giver. 
 For myself, I desire no better epitaph, in this respect, than 
 the words of Juvenal — 
 
 " Civis erat qui libera posset 
 Verba animi proferre, et vitam inpendere vero." 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 171 
 
 FRIEND, Real — one who will tell you of your faults 
 and follies in prosperity, and assist you with his hand and 
 heart in adversity. — See Phoenix, and Unicorn. 
 
 Strange as it may sound, we are sometimes rather dis- 
 posed to choose our friends from the unworthy than the 
 worthy ; for though it is difficult to love those whom we do 
 not esteem, it is a greater difficulty to love those whom we 
 esteem much more than ourselves. A perfect friendship re- 
 quires equality, even in virtue. He who has merited friends, 
 will seldom be without them ; for attachment is not so rare 
 as the desert that attracts and secures it. 
 
 Some there are, who, with an apparent zeal, vindicate their 
 friends from all their little peccadilloes, whitewash them as 
 carefully as they can, and then knock them on the head by 
 lamenting their addiction to some gross impropriety. This 
 resembles the conduct of the Roman priests, who, when an 
 ox was not completely white, chalked over the dark spots, 
 and leading him up to the altar, made him an immediate 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Favours, and especially pecuniary ones, are generally fatal 
 to friendship ; for our pride will ever prompt us to lower the 
 value of the gift by diminishing that of the donor. Ingra- 
 titude is an effort to recover our own esteem, by getting rid 
 of our esteem for our benefactor, whom we look upon as 
 a sort of toothdrawer, that has cured us of one pain by 
 inflicting another. 
 
 As friendship must be founded on mutual esteem, it cannot 
 long exist among the vicious ; for we soon find ill company 
 to be like a dog, which dirts those the most whom it loves 
 the best. After Lady E. L., and her female companion, had 
 defied public opinion for some time, her ladyship was obliged 
 to say — " Well, now, my dear friend, we must part for ever ; 
 for you have no character left, and I have not enough for 
 two." 
 
i 7 2 THE TIN TRUMPET ; 
 
 FRIENDS. — There may be the same vitiated taste in the 
 choice of friends, as of food. Many who like their game to 
 be high and rank, seem to choose their associates for the 
 same recommendation ; not objecting to those whose repu- 
 tations are in the worst odour. Others lay the foundation of 
 future quarrels by forming inconsiderate and incongruous 
 attachments, — a union, as Cowper wittily observes — 
 
 " Like Hand-in-Hand insurance plates, 
 Which unavoidably creates 
 
 The thoughts of conflagration." 
 
 A fashionable friend is one who will dine with you, game 
 with you, walk or ride out with you, borrow money of you, 
 escort your wife to public places — if she be handsome, stand 
 by and see you fairly shot, if you happen to be engaged in a 
 duel, and slink away and see you fairly clapped in a prison, 
 if you experience a reverse of fortune. — Such a man is like 
 the shadow of the sun-dial, which appears in fine weather, 
 and vanishes when there comes a rainy day. 
 
 People are always pleased with those who partake plea- 
 sure with them ; and hence there is a maudlin sympathy 
 among brother topers, — but this is fellowship, not friend- 
 ship. Never was the term more thoroughly desecrated than 
 by the heartless Horace Walpole, who, in one of his letters, 
 says, "If one of my friends happens to die, I drive down to 
 St. James's Coffee House, and bring home a new one." 
 
 FURNITURE — inanimate society. I like appropriate 
 emblems in furniture, though I would not adopt the pedantry 
 of Mr. Hope in its full extent, and make every joint stool, 
 by its classical and hieroglyphical mysteries, puzzle the head 
 instead of supporting the body. Where pleasant associations 
 can be awakened, — and I would admit none of a contrary 
 tendency, — why should not our chairs, tables, and side- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 173 
 
 boards be made to enhance the attractions and the resources 
 of home, by ministering to a refined taste, and stimulating 
 the imagination ? To study how every decoration may ex- 
 press an emblem, and even to pun in marble, by sculpturing 
 horses' heads beside a bust of Philip, because that word 
 signifies, in Greek, a lover of horses, is a pitiful conceit ; but 
 it is pleasant, nevertheless, to impart to mahogany some of 
 the properties of mind, to lift upholstery out of its materiality, 
 and make it the medium for conveying the fancy through the 
 whole range of time and space. 
 
 FUTURITY — what we are to be, determined by what 
 we have been. — An inscrutable mystery, of which we can 
 only guess at a solution, by referring to the present and the 
 past. These assure us, by millions of incontestable proofs, 
 that the benevolent Creator sympathises with our happiness ; 
 then he must sympathise still more tenderly with our suffer- 
 ings. To suppose that He would scatter all sorts of delights 
 around us in this evanescent world, and yet doom the great 
 mass of mankind to everlasting anguish in the next, is an 
 irreconcileable contradiction. The earth, upon which we 
 are merely flitting passengers, is everywhere enamelled with 
 flowers, equally exquisite for varied beauty and perfume, 
 but useless, except for the purpose of diffusing pleasure ; 
 and yet our eternal abode is to be horrent with fire and 
 agony ! The best way of combating the terrors with which 
 superstition has darkened futurity, is to appeal from the 
 unknown to the known, from the unseen to the visible, from 
 imaginary torment to real enjoyment, from the frightfulness 
 and the stench of Tophet to the beauty of a tulip, and the 
 fragrance of a rose. 
 
174 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 ALLOWS — a cure without being a prevention 
 of crime. It is calculated, that since the sus- 
 pension of bank payments, 800 human beings 
 have been executed for forgery alone ! In the 
 year 1832, an important improvement was 
 effected in our penal code, by the entire repeal of the punish- 
 ment of death, as it regarded five classes of criminals. 
 
 It is curious to observe how, in all cases, the good sense 
 and humanity of the public outstrip those of judges and 
 legislators, who, being generally both hardened and blinded 
 by habit, neither feel for the criminal, nor see the iniquity 
 of the law. Singular inconsistency ! that many of the same 
 clear-sighted and kind-hearted people, who rail against the 
 severity of our code, as utterly inconsistent with the special 
 injunctions and mild spirit of Christianity, will still subject 
 those who differ from them in matters of faith to all the 
 damnatory clauses of their vindictive creed. They are re- 
 ligiously bent upon mitigating every code but the religious, 
 and would alleviate the punishment of all offenders, except 
 those who have committed the irremissible crime of differing 
 from them in opinion. And yet, what are the comparatively 
 painless three or four minutes of hanging, to an eternity of 
 exquisite anguish ? Oh ! why will not men adopt the heal- 
 ing, the consolatory, the blessed and blessing spirit of 
 Christianity, instead of the occasional bitterness of its 
 letter ? why will they not read the universe, instead of the 
 perversions and anathemas of gloomy fanatics, and believe, 
 that in a future state the doom, even of the guilty, will be 
 measured by the wisdom, the justice, the mercy of the 
 Creator, rather than by the misdeeds of the creature ? 
 
 GAME LAWS — acts passed for the careful protection 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 175 
 
 of birds and beasts, and the ruthless proscription of human 
 beings. If these barbarous enactments, instead of proceed- 
 ing from the mere caprices of tyranny, were governed by 
 anything like principle and common sense, we might venture 
 to ask, why one sort of wild beast or bird should be pro- 
 nounced game in preference to another ? — why pigeons, and 
 plovers, and weazles, should not receive that appellation, as 
 well as pheasants, partridges, and hares ? — why, in short, the 
 Squirearchy should not, in imitation of King John, lay a 
 total interdict upon all the winged, as well as four-footed 
 creatures ; while such of them as are fond of angling, 
 claimed all the fishes as their exclusive privilege and pro- 
 perty. There are no natural distinctions. If they have a 
 right in one instance, they have a right in all, and the feres 
 natures must have been meant by heaven for the sole enjoy- 
 ment and amusement of sportsmen and country gentlemen^ 
 who have the least need of them, and, therefore, the least 
 claim to them. It was once made felony to steal a hawk ; 
 and he who took its eggs, even in his own grounds, was 
 liable to imprisonment for a year and a day, besides a fine at 
 the King's pleasure. Hawking is no longer an amusement 
 ot the gentry, and therefore, this barbarous law has been 
 repealed ; but how horrible, that the lives and liberty of the 
 commonalty should thus depend upon the fashion of a day, 
 and the occasional pastimes of that narrow class, who dub 
 themselves the gentry. What remains of our game laws is 
 conceived in the same atrocious spirit, and is too monstrous 
 to endure much longer against the growing knowledge of the 
 people, and a reformed Parliament. 
 
 In the dark ages, when rude warriors could find no other 
 employment in peace than to make field sports serve as a 
 sort of apprenticeship to the arts of war, there might be 
 some excuse for an eager addiction to them ; but in these 
 days, when even the Squirearchy can read and write, when, 
 
176 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 besides the whole unlimited range of intellectual pursuit, 
 they may command exercises and amusements of all sorts, 
 when some have magisterial functions to discharge, and 
 all may occupy themselves in works of local charity, and 
 parochial or county utility, to affirm that they have no 
 resources and no inducement to reside upon their estates, if 
 they may not worry poor hares to death, and mangle and 
 destroy partridges, is to stultify themselves, to confess that 
 they are at once weak, and cruel, and utterly worthless 
 members of society. 
 
 Then comes the pithy question, why our rural districts 
 should be disturbed, demoralised, and stained with blood ; 
 why the fields of the industrious husbandman should be 
 overrun and damaged, and his fences broken down ; why 
 the crops of the farmer should be wasted by the depreda- 
 tions of game, against whose ravages it is punishable to 
 defend himself ? why our prisons and transport-ships should 
 be crowded with victims, in order to afford occasional pas- 
 time to a sporting Squirearchy, who stand self-convicted 
 as the idlest, the most unfeeling, the least meritorious class 
 of the whole community ? 
 
 The good sense and humanity of the lower orders have 
 induced them to forego bear and badger-baiting altogether ; 
 bull-baiting and cock-throwing are falling fast into desue- 
 tude, and most of their other cruel pastimes are discon- 
 tinued ; an improvement which, it is to be hoped, will not 
 be altogether thrown away upon those patrician sportsmen, 
 who ought to have set the example which they are now 
 called upon to follow. 
 
 GAMING, see Beggar and Suicide. — The gamester 
 begins by being a dupe, speedily becomes a knave, and 
 generally ends his career as a pauper. A dice-box, like that 
 of Pandora, is full of all evils, with a deceitful Hope at the 
 
OR HEADS AND TALES. 177 
 
 bottom, which generally turns into Despair. There is but 
 one good throw upon the dice/which is, to throw them away. 
 
 GENIUS— a natural aptitude to perform well and easily 
 that which others can do but indifferently, and with pains. 
 Locke has exploded the theory of innate ideas. The mind 
 of a newly-born infant is as a new mirror, which, with a 
 capacity to reflect all objects, is, in itself, objectless. There 
 is nothing innate or original in either case, except the 
 capacity to reflect, which will vary according to the peculiar 
 construction of the mind or the mirror; some presenting 
 objects with a true or a false, with a beautifying or a dis- 
 coloured and unbecoming hue ; while others will enlarge, 
 diminish, distort, or absolutely reverse the forms presented 
 to them. These different tendencies of minds, originally 
 idealess, constitute the diversities of human character, or 
 form what is commonly called genius. 
 
 GHOSTS. — There is more meaning and philosophy than 
 at first sight appears in Coleridge's answer to Lady Beau- 
 mont, when she asked him whether he believed in ghosts — 
 " O no, Madam, I have seen too many to believe in them." 
 He had sense enough to see that his senses had been 
 deceived. 
 
 GLORY, Military — sharing with plague, pestilence, and 
 famine, the honour of destroying your species ; and partici- 
 pating with Alexander's horse the distinction of transmitting 
 your name to posterity. 
 
 GLUTTONY.— Pope's line— 
 
 " Is there no help then, Helluo, bring the jowl," 
 was suggested by what Athenasus records of Philoxenus, the 
 
173 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Dithyrambic poet, who, having nearly completed, at one 
 meal, an enormous polypus, was seized with convulsive 
 spasms, and being told his last hour was at hand, exclaimed 
 — " Since Charon and Atropos are come to call me away 
 from my delicacies, it is best to leave nothing behind, so 
 bring the remainder of the polypus." According to the same 
 veracious author, Cambles, being given to gastromargism, 
 ate up his wife, and in the morning, found her hands in his 
 throat ! Many a poor man now-a-days, when he finds the 
 hands of his shrewish wife in his throat, would be glad to 
 dispose of the rest of her body after the fashion of Cambles. 
 
 GNATS. — " To what base uses may we not return ! " 
 exclaims Hamlet, — "Imperial Caesar dead and turned to 
 clay," &c. It is a humiliating fact, which cannot be denied ; 
 but, on the other hand, there are many forms of matter, 
 which, in their decomposition, are as much elevated, as the 
 ingredients of Caesar's body were temporarily degraded. 
 Gnats, for instance, and other annoying insects devoured by 
 birds, are ultimately converted into music ; their importunate 
 buzzing being but an inharmonious prelude, or tuning of 
 instruments for the warbling of the nightingale, the cheerful 
 song of the thrush, and the full concert of the winged 
 choristers, who turn the summer air into melody. Our own 
 daily food, ministering to the spirit of which the body is only 
 the shrine, may be sublimised into wit, wisdom, and poetry. 
 In the economy of nature, there is a perpetual interchange of 
 life and death, of mind and matter. We draw existence and 
 intellect from the earth ; we return to it, and contribute, by 
 resolving into our first elements, to supply life and intellect 
 to our successors. 
 
 GOETHE — said that he considered no work complete, 
 unless it involved some mystery which the author left un- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 179 
 
 explained, for the express purpose of stimulating the curiosity 
 and the faculties of the reader. In this confession we have 
 a key to his Faust, to much of the Kantian philosophy, and 
 to a large portion of the German literature in general. The 
 mystical — the obscure — the enigmatical, where there is no 
 real riddle to be solved, as in the case of Faust, Coleridge's 
 Christabel, and similar productions, are so much sheer im- 
 pertinence, and one feels a contemptuous pity for those 
 laborious GEdipi, who puzzle their brains in endeavouring to 
 solve the imaginary enigma of a sham Sphinx. German 
 writers and readers seem to find a delight in thus stultifying 
 each other, but it is foreign to the plain, straightforward, 
 intelligible, useful, matter-of-fact character of England, — and 
 therefore is it, that German literature will never become 
 popular among us. Goethe — the Shakspeare and Voltaire 
 of Germany — is little known in this country, except by his 
 Werther and his Faust. 
 
 GOOD, in things evil. — 
 
 ' ' ' There is a soul of goodness in things evil, 
 Would men observingly distil it out.' 
 
 " So with equal wisdom and good-nature, does Shakspeare 
 make one of his characters exclaim. — Suffering gives strength 
 to sympathy. Hate of the particular may have a foundation 
 in love for the general. The lowest and most wilful vice 
 may plunge deeper out of a regret of virtue. Even in envy 
 may be discerned something of an instinct of justice, some- 
 thing of a wish to see universal fair-play, and things on a 
 level." Leigh Hunt, from one of whose delightful papers in 
 the Indicator this passage is extracted, might easily have 
 expanded his idea, and illustrated it by further examples ; 
 for while body and soul retain their alliance, their joint off- 
 spring will ever bear a likeness to either parent. " The web 
 
 N 2 
 
iSo THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together ; our 
 virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not ; and 
 our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our 
 virtues." To begin with the latter ; — what we call patriotism, 
 is often a blind and mischievous prejudice against other 
 nations, rather than an enlightened preference of our own. 
 Love is as often sensual as sentimental. Parental affection, 
 where it is not instinctive, is only reflected self-love. Charity 
 not seldom proceeds from pride, from our desire to get rid of 
 an uneasy sensation, or from the hope of being repaid with 
 usurious interest what we "lend to the Lord." Dispensing 
 justice may spring from the thirst of domination over our 
 fellow creatures ; and religion itself, even when sincere, may 
 be instigated by that selfish regard to future reward, which 
 has been termed — other- worldliness. 
 
 As our virtues are tainted occasionally by degrading 
 associations, so may our vices be mingled with redeeming 
 ones. Conjugal jealousy and the hatred of a rival, spring 
 from the intensity of our love. Revenge, which, like envy, is 
 an instinct of justice, does but take into its own hands the 
 execution of that natural law which preceded the social. 
 Avarice is only prudence and economy pushed to excess ; 
 intemperance has its source in fellowship and hospitality; 
 and wasteful extravagance springs from an unregulated 
 generosity. These considerations are not urged to encourage 
 moral Pyrrhonism and doubt ; still less to confound the 
 barriers of right and wrong ; but to inculcate humility as 
 well as forbearance, to teach us that we should neither be too 
 overweening in estimating our own virtues, nor too severe in 
 condemning the failings of others. 
 
 GOODNESS— a synonyme for Deity. "When all the 
 good of a system," says G. L. Le Sage, of Geneva, " can 
 easily be traced to general principles, and when all the evils 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. i8r 
 
 appear to be exceptions, closely connected with some good, 
 the excess being evidently, though, perhaps, but in a small 
 degree, on the side of good, the contriver must be regarded 
 as beneficent." If the existence of pain and evil render it 
 difficult for a reflecting man to be an optimist, there is no 
 reason why he should not, at all events, be an agathist. It 
 is an observation of Dr. Johnson, that as the greatest liar 
 tells more truth than falsehood, so may it be said of the 
 worst man, that he does more good than evil. 
 
 "When a common soldier," observes Adam Smith, "is 
 ordered upon a forlorn hope, his courage, and his sense of 
 duty, make him march to his doom with alacrity ; but how 
 few are philosophers enough to imitate this brave devotion, 
 when they are ordered out upon the forlorn hope of the 
 universe." The moral courage that will face obloquy in a 
 good cause, is a much rarer gift than the bodily valour that 
 will confront death in a bad one. 
 
 With a double vigilance should we watch our actions, 
 when we reflect, that good and bad ones are never childless ; 
 and that, in both cases, the offspring goes beyond the parent, 
 — every good begetting a better, every bad a worse. 
 
 GOOSE — a bird, and word of reproach, but I know not 
 why. M. de Cottu, the French jurist, who came to this 
 country to digest our laws and our dinners, and who pro- 
 nounced our cuisine to be fade et bornee, records, with an 
 affectation of delicate disgust, that even at decent tables he 
 had often seen a goose ! — Gadso ! I can easily believe it, if 
 he sat opposite the mirror. Why this calumniated fowl 
 should be a byword for ridicule in our discourse, or an 
 object of abomination at polite tables, is an enigma, which it 
 might puzzle CEdipus to solve. Every one knows that 
 the Roman State was saved by the cackling of geese ; a 
 hint which has by no means been thrown away upon some 
 
182 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of our own short-witted and long-winded senators. Among 
 the Romans, the gander and his spouse were a favourite and 
 a fashionable dish'; but learned commentators maintain, that 
 the particular brood to which the commonwealth was so 
 much indebted was preserved, as well as all its immediate 
 descendants, with the utmost care ; a circumstance which 
 must have been much deplored by the epicures of that day, 
 since it became impossible to have a Capitol goose for 
 dinner. Then, as now, the little giblets were thought great 
 delicacies, and good livers deemed the livers good, as 
 appears by the following extract from Francis's Horace, 
 b. ii. sat. 8 : — 
 
 ' ' And a white gander's liver, 
 Stuffed fat with figs, bespoke the curious giver." 
 
 Whence, also, we may see that their epicurism extended 
 even to the colour. A modern white gander is a rara avis. 
 Queen Elizabeth was cutting up a goose, when she learnt 
 that the Spanish armada had been cut up by a Drake. Why, 
 then, should a bird, ennobled by so many historical, and 
 endeared by so many culinary recommendations, be treated 
 with scorn and contumely ? If the reader sympathise with 
 the writer in wishing to see some zealous, though tardy 
 reparation, made by a featherless biped to the biped who 
 supplies us with feathers, he will peruse with a kindred com- 
 placency and indulgence the following 
 
 ODE TO A GOOSE, 
 
 VVritteft after dinner on the Feast of St. Michael, 
 
 STROPHE I. 
 
 O bird most rare ! although thou art 
 Uncommon common on a common, 
 What man or woman 
 Can in one single term impart 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 183 
 
 A proper name for thee ? — An ancient Roman 
 Would answer — " Anser." Sure I am that no man, 
 Knowing thy various attributes, would choose 
 To call thee Goose ! 
 
 ANTISTROPHE I. 
 
 No, Goose ! thou art no Goose. Well stuffed with sage 
 And titillating things both dead and living, 
 For ever art thou giving 
 Solace to man in life's brief pilgrimage. 
 
 EPODE I. 
 
 Jove's eagle wielding the avenging thunder, 
 Is but a folio hawk, a bird of plunder. 
 
 Minerva's owl, 
 
 (Both are foul fowl !) 
 Shunning the light, should ne'er have been preferrid 
 To rank as Wisdom's bird. — 
 As for the young and stately swan, 
 A Scottish lawyer is the man 
 
 To sing its praises. 
 / am no writer to the cygnet — so, 
 
 Avoiding further periphrases, 
 For thee alone, O Goose ! my verse shall flow. 
 
 STROPHE 11. 
 O bird of Morpheus ! half our lives are sped, 
 (Ay, and the happiest too) upon a bed 
 Stuffed with thy feathers. On thy breast 
 
 Thou hushest us to rest, 
 
 As if we were thy goslings, 
 
 Till we forget life's hubble-bubble, 
 Its toil and trouble, 
 Its crossings and its jostlings, 
 And borne in dreams to empyrean latitudes, 
 Revel in ecstasies and bright beatitudes. 
 
 ANTISTROPHE II. 
 Churls that we are ! what snoozing hum 
 
 Ascends to thee? — what paeans, what adorings? 
 Our mouths, perchance, are open, but they're dumb : 
 Our sole harangues 
 Are nasal twangs, 
 And all our gratitude consists of snorings. 
 
iS-j THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 EPODE II. 
 
 Bird of Apollo ! worthy to pluck grass 
 
 On the Parnassian mountain, 
 
 Beside the classic fountain 
 Of Hippocrene, what Muse with thee can class, 
 To whose inspiring wing we owe 
 
 All that the poets past have writ ; 
 From whose ungathered wings shall flow 
 All our whole store of future wit ? 
 
 Well may'st thou strut, 
 
 Proud of thy pens uncut, 
 
 Which shall cut jokes, 
 
 In after times, for unborn folks ;— ■ 
 Well may'st thou plume thyself upon thy plumage — all 
 
 Is erudite and intellectual, 
 
 Each wing a cyclopaedia, fraught 
 
 With genius multiform, a world of thought ! 
 
 Ah ! when thou putt'st thy head 
 
 Beneath that wing to bed, 
 In future libraries thou tak'st a nap, 
 And dream'st of Paternoster Row, mayhap ! 
 What are they dreaming of, that they forget 
 
 (The publishing and scribbling set) 
 
 To apotheosise thee, Goose ! 
 As the tenth Muse ? 
 
 ANTISTROPHE III. 
 
 And then the darling driblets, 
 
 That constitute thy giblets, 
 
 Whether in soup or stew'd, 
 O ! what delectable and dainty food ! 
 Full of my subject ('twas my dinner dish,) 
 
 No wonder that I feel all over goosy, 
 
 Fired with what Braham calls entusimusy, 
 So much so, I could almost wish, 
 
 If fate were nothing loth, 
 
 To be a Goose instead of man. 
 " Be doubly happy on thy present plan," 
 
 (Methinks the reader cries,) 
 
 " And thank the favouring destinies, 
 
 For now thou'rt both / " 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 185 
 
 GOUT — sometimes the father's sin visited upon the child, 
 but more often the child of our own sins visiting its father. 
 A man of the latter stamp once asked Abernethy what he 
 should do to avoid the infliction. — " Live upon a shilling a 
 day— and earn it," was the reply, at once pertinent and im- 
 pertinent. 
 
 GOVERNMENT.— According to Milton, it should be the 
 first object in a representative commonwealth, " to make the 
 people fittest to choose, and those chosen fittest to govern." 
 According to the Conservatives, the people should be de- 
 frauded, as much as possible, of the elective franchise, in 
 order that an oligarchy may the more easily defraud them of 
 everything else. A despotic government is an inverted cone, 
 resting upon a point, and liable to be toppled down by the 
 smallest movement. A popular government is a pyramid, 
 the firmest and most enduring of all forms. 
 
 Government, as a science, has by no means kept pace with 
 the advancement of other arts. It might be expected, that 
 legislatures, like individuals, although headstrong, violent, 
 and passionate, in the outset of their career, would become 
 mild, moderate, and wise in their old age ; but experience 
 does not justify this inference. In human nature, there are 
 two leading principles, or motives of conduct, — the hope of 
 reward, and the fear of punishment ; but most governments 
 either address themselves exclusively to the latter, or if they 
 bring the former into operation, they begin at the wrong end, 
 showering titles, ribands, emoluments, honours, and distinc- 
 tions upon the upper classes, who should be taught to con- 
 sider virtue as its own reward, while the lower orders are 
 only attempted to be influenced by pains, penalties, and 
 terror. 
 
 Were the art of government left to its official functionaries, 
 it would probably be stationary, even in England ; but it is 
 
186 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 fortunately pushed forward on the road of improvement by 
 public opinion, the power of which, developing itself through 
 a free press, is becoming every day more manifest and irresis- 
 tible. If there be truth in the vox fiopuli vox Dei, this must 
 be the best, the most legitimate, the most hallowed of all 
 authority. Every man has a voice in the formation of that 
 public opinion, which confers the privileges, without incurring 
 the dangers, of universal suffrage. Some, it is true, have 
 more weight than others, but it is the superior influence of 
 talent and information, a much better element of representa- 
 tion than property, upon which the elective franchise is 
 usually based. Government will have attained its perfection 
 when the people, being universally educated and competent 
 to judge, and the press being untaxed and unfettered, so as 
 to give power and certainty to their voice, the rulers of the 
 State, obeying while they govern, and following while they 
 seem to lead, shall be merely the official mouthpieces of the 
 national will. ' 
 
 These, however, will be deemed the notions of a visionary; 
 a beau ideal, for the realization of which good men may sigh, 
 while practical ones will smile compassionately, and refer 
 the experiment to the millennium. 
 
 GRATITUDE.— If this be justly defined as "a lively 
 sense of benefits to come," ingratitude is so far preferable, 
 that it is free from hypocrisy and sordid motives, and releases 
 the benefactor as well as the benefited. If the one be a 
 calculating virtue, the other is at least a frank vice. Great 
 ingratitude cannot be common, because great beneficence is 
 rare, and its alleged frequency, therefore, is often a pretext 
 trumped up by the parsimonious to save their pockets. To 
 be deterred by such a plea from practising charity, when we 
 have the means, is to commit towards heaven the very offence 
 which we are imputing to our fellow-creatures. Besides, one 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 187 
 
 man's ingratitude is not another man's ingratitude. Benefi- 
 cent people are rarely grateful ; they look upon common 
 favours like common politeness, as a matter of course. An 
 apparent gratitude may sometimes be the sharpest revenge. 
 Sir Charles Sedley, when he joined the Prince of Orange, 
 said of King James the Second — " He has made my daughter 
 a Countess, and I will show my gratitude by endeavouring 
 to make his a Queen." It will be recollected, that Sedley's 
 daughter, created Countess of Dorchester, was James's 
 mistress, and that the Prince of Orange's wife, afterwards 
 Queen Mary, was James's daughter. 
 
 GRAVE — the gate through which we pass from the 
 visible to the invisible world. 
 
 " GRAVITY"— says Rochefoucauld, " is a mystery of the 
 body, invented to conceal the defects of the understanding." 
 
 GRIEFS — are like the beings that endure them, — -the 
 little ones are the most clamorous and noisy; those of older 
 growth, and greater magnitude, are generally tranquil, and 
 sometimes silent. Our minds are like ill-hung vehicles; 
 when they have little to carry, they raise a prodigious clatter, 
 — when heavily laden, they neither creak nor rumble. 
 
 GRUMBLERS — who are perpetually publishing the mal- 
 treatment they have experienced, excite but little sympathy ; 
 for, without going the length of Rochefoucauld's maxim, it 
 may safely be maintained, that there is nothing which people 
 in general bear with more equanimity than the misfortunes 
 of their neighbours. It is natural that those who feel them- 
 selves aggrieved, should give vent to complaint; but it 
 is equally so, that their hearers should at length listen to the 
 catalogue of their wrongs with indifference. 
 
iS8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 " If you are treated ill and put on, 
 
 'Tis natural to make a fuss ; 
 To see it and not care a button, 
 
 Is just as natural for us. 
 Like people viewing, at a distance, 
 
 Two persons thrown out of a casement, 
 All we can do for your assistance, 
 
 Is to afford you our amazement : — 
 For an impartial looker-on 
 
 In such disasters never chooses ; 
 'Tis neither Tom, nor Will, nor John, — 
 
 'Tis the phenomenon amuses." * 
 
 Not to enjoy all the innocent happiness we can, is so far 
 impious, that it is defrauding the Creator of that purpose in 
 our creation, which we may consider to be the most congenial 
 to the divine nature. 
 
 ABIT — a second nature, which often super- 
 sedes the first. The habit which enables one 
 man to dispense with necessaries, may render 
 superfluities indispensable to another. Ex- 
 tremes touch ; he who wants no favours from 
 Fortune, may be said to have obtained the very greatest that 
 she can bestow, in realizing an independence which no 
 changes or reverses can diminish. What king or conqueror 
 can say as much ? 
 
 The late Sir W r S g, as he hurried along the 
 
 streets of London, had contracted a habit, whenever he met 
 
 * Hall Stevenson's Works, vol. i. p. 120 ; a writer already forgotten, 
 although he died so lately as 1785. His fables, a poor imitation o* 
 Fontaine, deriving their sole interest from the politics of the day, and 
 the indelicacy of his " Crazy Tales," in imitation of Chaucer and Prior, 
 have hurried his productions into a quick oblivion, spite of the marvel- 
 lous case of his versification, which has rarely been equalled. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 189 
 
 any of his numerous acquaintance, of saluting them with a 
 passing bow, a touch of the hat, and the words — " Sir, I 
 wish you a very good morning." As High Sheriff of a county, 
 it once became his duty to attend the execution of a criminal, 
 when, having seen that all the preliminary arrangements 
 were complete, and that his services were no longer needed, 
 he bowed, and touched his hat to the culprit, whose cap was 
 already over his face, and took leave of him with his habitual 
 — " Sir, I wish you a very good morning !" 
 
 A friend of the author's, who had purchased a post-obit^ 
 dependent on the life of an elderly female, being asked, some 
 years afterwards, whether he had yet come into possession^ 
 replied — " Oh no ! — and I have quite given it up ; for the 
 old cat has now acquired such a habit of living, that I do 
 not suppose she could die if she would." It must be con- 
 fessed, that this obstinate habit is the very last that we resign. 
 
 HAPPINESS — a blessing often missed by those who run 
 after pleasure, and generally found by those who suffer 
 pleasure to run after them. Like a Will-o'-the-wisp, it is 
 sometimes farthest off when we imagine we can grasp it, and 
 nearest to us when it appears to be at a distance. The most 
 effectual way to secure it to ourselves, is to confer it upon 
 others. 
 
 None are either so miserable or so happy as they are 
 thought, for the mind soon habituates itself to its moral 
 atmosphere, whether rough or gentle. If there be no differ- 
 ence between possessing a thing, and not wishing for it, 
 happiness may be best attained by indifference ; at all 
 events there is a greater approximation than is generally 
 supposed, between those who have lost, and those who retain 
 their happiness ; since the former are always hoping to 
 recover, what the latter are always fearing to be deprived of. 
 
 Pyrrhus, denying the reality of any beatitude, maintained 
 
r 9 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 that life and death were equal, and when asked why he did 
 not seek the grave, since existence was so little attractive, 
 replied, " Because both are indifferent to me." 
 
 In the progress of time and general improvement, the 
 aggregate of human enjoyment may be incalculably in- 
 creased, without diminishing the stock of comparative dis- 
 content ; for as we measure our portion in life not by our 
 superiority to our predecessors, but by our inferiority to our 
 contemporaries, we forget abstract benefits in relative dis- 
 advantages. Notwithstanding this drawback, human hap- 
 piness must be constantly augmenting. As civilization 
 advances, every peasant enjoys luxuries and securities from 
 which nobles and monarchs were formerly debarred. That 
 there is much less misery and suffering in the world than 
 •formerly, is incontestably proved by the remarkable increase 
 in the mean duration of life, while the years thus added to 
 our span, derive a double value from the almost universal 
 diffusion of the means of enjoying them. 
 
 As important disappointments do but rarely occur, and 
 yet many men are unhappy during the greater part of their 
 lives, it is evident that they must fret their spirit about 
 trifles. The great secret of cheerfulness and content is not 
 to be annoyed by petty thwartings, and not to aspire to un- 
 attainable objects. Children are always^ happy, because 
 they are always pursuing trifles of easy acquisition. 
 
 Exaggerating the misery of mankind is a species of impiety, 
 because it is an oblique reflection on the benevolence of the 
 Deity. If man had been made involuntarily happy, he 
 would have been without motives to exertion, and would 
 have lost that noblest species of felicity which arises from 
 the virtuous and successful development of his faculties. If 
 virtue, moreover, always ensured happiness, while vice en- 
 tailed inevitable misery, we should lose one of the strongest 
 arguments for a future state of retribution. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 191 
 
 HARDSHIPS — pleasures when they are self-imposed, 
 intolerable grievances when they are required by our duty. 
 What sportsman ever complains of fatigue, what card-player 
 of sedentariness, what angler of solitude and dulness, what 
 bookworm of confinement, what miser of poverty, what lover 
 of slavery ? — Ay, but these annoyances may be endured with 
 patience, because they are voluntary. Well, and what pre- 
 vents us from performing with an equal good-will the tasks 
 enjoined by our station in life, and which all our ill-will can- 
 not enable us to avoid? We conquer our fate when we submit 
 to it cheerfully. Vain repinings only serve to aggravate it. 
 
 So prone, however, are we to discontent and complaint, 
 that even when men bear their real hardships with tolerable 
 composure, they are apt to invent imaginary ones, to which 
 they cannot submit with any degree of patience. 
 
 HARMONY, Musical — a sensual pleasure, which, in 
 well regulated minds, seldom fails to produce moral results. 
 
 Hark ! to the voice of yonder sour 
 
 And gloomy monitor, who cries — 
 ' * Why do ye waste life's fleeting hour 
 
 In idle songs and melodies ? 
 The tongue that sings — the hands that play, 
 
 Shall soon be mute and cold in death, 
 And ye who listen to the lay 
 
 As soon shall yield your parting breath." 
 
 But hark ! I hear an angel's voice — 
 
 " Mortals !" exclaims the dulcet chant, 
 ' ' Sing ! and with instruments rejoice, 
 
 For music is a heavenly grant. 
 'Twas meant to charm your cares away, 
 
 The thoughts to raise — the heart to mend, 
 And hallow'd thus, its lightest lay» 
 
 Attains a high and moral end." 
 
 He who has a spirit of harmony in his nature will exhibit 
 
ig2 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 it in every other direction, as well as in that of music. There 
 will be a pleasing concord and consentaneousness in all his 
 thoughts, words, and actions. As the sound of music 
 enables him to walk in a sustained and regular step over 
 uneven ground, so will the moral harmony of his nature, 
 responding to the unheard music of the spheres, or in other 
 words, to the voice of God, speaking by his revelations, 
 empower him to pursue the right way with a steady and 
 orderly step, amid all the quicksands and inequalities of his 
 life's pilgrimage. 
 
 HEAD — a bulbous excrescence, of special use to many as 
 a peg for hanging a hat on — as a barber's block for support- 
 ing wigs — as a target for shooting at when rendered conspi- 
 cuous by a shining helmet — as a snuffbox or a chatterbox — 
 as a machine for fitting into a halter or guillotine — as a 
 receptacle for freaks, fancies, follies, passions, prejudices, 
 predilections — for anything, in short, but brains. 
 
 HEALTH. — See Temperance, Exercise, and Virtue as often 
 as you can, and the doctor as seldom as you can. The 
 mind's health is the best security for that of the body — Qui 
 medicl vivit miserh vivit. 
 
 HEART. — According to a French author, those men pass 
 the most comfortably through the world, who have a good 
 digestion and a hard heart; the former preserving them 
 from all the annoyances o£ rlyspepsia, and the latter from 
 those painful feelings to which the compassionate and the 
 sympathising are perpetually subject. Such a man, indeed, 
 may have fewer pains, but can he enjoy any pleasure, except 
 the vulgar ones of sense ? He that possesses a susceptible 
 heart, has an inexhaustible mine of sweet emotions. Let 
 him cherish its tenderness, and guard, above all things, 
 
OR. HEADS AND TALES. 193 
 
 against those outpourings of envy or uncharitableness, which 
 inevitably harden the heart, as the foam exuded by testaceous 
 animals encrusts into shell. 
 
 HEREDITARY DISTINCTIONS— bestowing personal 
 rewards and honours without the smallest regard to personal 
 qualifications, or even to flagrant afo-qualifications. The 
 winner of a title generally deserves it ; he who succeeds to 
 it, even though he may deserve nothing but to lose it, is 
 allowed to signalize his demerit by retaining all the pride, 
 pomp, and circumstance of rank. Frederick of Prussia knew 
 better. In the hopeful project of propagating procerity, he 
 compelled his grenadiers to marry giantesses, intending to 
 recruit his body-guards with their offspring ; but when he 
 found that the children fell short of the parents' standard, he 
 refused to enrol them, and either placed them in the regi- 
 ments of the line, or made them drummers and fifers. If we 
 ejected, in like manner, from our House of Lords, the sons 
 who fell short of the mental stature by which the winners of 
 their title had achieved distinction, there would be a cer- 
 tainty of our possessing a more enlightened upper house ; 
 but, alas ! there might also be a chance of our having none 
 at all ! 
 
 Fame, titles, and wealth, the great incentives to patriotism, 
 virtue, and exertion, have a signal moral effect on the whole 
 nation when they are bestowed upon those who have merited 
 them. Their example, thus rendered conspicuous to all, 
 excites in all a noble emulation, the surest source of generous 
 and lofty deeds. But when the distinctions thus honourably 
 achieved are rendered hereditary, the whole process is 
 reversed, and the result is often positively demoralising, both 
 upon the inheritor and the spectators. Already possessing 
 all the public rewards of merit, and feeling not the smallest 
 motive for exertion, the hereditary nobleman naturally sinks 
 
i 9 4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 into indolence, even if he do not abandon himself to dissolute 
 courses ; while the inferior classes of society, seeing all the 
 recompences of excellence heaped upon the slothful and the 
 depraved, feel the distinctions of right and wrong confounded 
 in their minds, and conclude that vice has as good a chance 
 for attaining eminence as virtue. We must recollect, too, that 
 the beneficial example of the original achiever of the title, 
 supposing it to have been honourably earned, operates but 
 for one life, or rather for a portion of it, while this demoralis- 
 ing influence can only cease with the extinction of the family. 
 Doubtless there are many noblemen, and more probably in 
 England than in any other country, who instead of making 
 their titles their honour, are an honour to their titles, and 
 who have each a much higher merit than that of being " the 
 tenth transmitter of a foolish face ; " but though we are glad 
 to see such a man in possession of honours, we should 
 respect him more, had he earned his distinctions instead of 
 inheriting them. 
 
 As to making a man, whether knave, dotard, or idiot, for 
 there are no disqualifications, a hereditary legislator, the 
 very term involves an absurdity, at which nothing but its 
 familiarity prevents our laughing. — What should we say 
 to an hereditary poet, or philosopher, or member of the 
 House of Commons ? Our history scarcely affords a single 
 instance of a name continuing illustrious beyond two 
 generations at the most, after which the glory of the an- 
 cestor often serves but to signalize the degeneracy of the 
 descendant. 
 
 " But," says a grave reader in spectacles, " if men could 
 not transmit their titles and honours, they would be much 
 less solicitous to earn them, and thus we should lose the 
 noblest incentive to noble deeds." My dear Sir, as Dr. 
 Johnson once said to Boswell, — clear your mind of cant. 
 Many heroes, besides Lord Nelson, having no sons to care 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 195 
 
 about, knew when they were seeking distinctions, that they 
 would bequeath them to relatives whom they positively dis- 
 liked. If a man be so indifferent to fame and reward, as not 
 to exert himself for his own sake, depend upon it he will 
 never do it for the sake of his son. Our love of offspring, 
 is only self-love at second-hand : and it is never powerful 
 enough to supersede the first. That men would be quite 
 satisfied with titles and honours for life, is incontestably 
 proved by the eagerness with which the proudest of our 
 aristocracy struggle for ribands, and orders, and appoint- 
 ments about the Court, which are not transmissible to 
 descendants. We do not find that the Scotch and Irish 
 peers of parliament set the less value on that distinction, 
 because it expires with the life of the individual, or the dis- 
 solution of parliament. 
 
 In former times, an order of nobility was a barrier against 
 the encroachments of the Crown ; in the present, it is more 
 frequently an impediment to the progress, improvement, and 
 just rights of the commonalty ; coming between the king and 
 the people, as has been remarked by Champfort, much in 
 the same manner as the hound comes between the hunter 
 and the hare. 
 
 When Locke exploded the theory of innate ideas, there 
 should have been an end to the system of innate distinctions. 
 Many wise, and good, and liberal-minded men are never- 
 theless strenuous advocates for the maintenance of an here- 
 ditary nobility, asserting it to be consonant to the order 
 and intentions of nature. Upon this intricate question, I 
 agree with Rumbold, the Roundhead maltster of Charles 
 the Second's time, who said that he should firmly believe 
 in the divine origin of hereditary distinctions, when he 
 saw one class of men born with saddles on their backs, 
 and another class with whips and spurs, all ready to ride 
 them. 
 
 o 2 
 
i 5 6 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 HETERODOXY — is another man's doxy : — whereas 
 Orthodoxy is a man's own doxy. The definition is an old 
 one, but it might be difficult to give a new one which 
 should be more accurate. Hales defines heresy and schism 
 as religious scarecrows : — they might be efficient ones 
 formerly, but now-a-days they will scare few birds except 
 gulls and dotterels. 
 
 HINT -a jog of the mental elbow. Lord M., a Scottish 
 judge, well known for his penurious habits, being compelled 
 to give a dinner to the barristers upon circuit, and having 
 neglected to order any claret, with which they had been 
 accustomed to be regaled on such occasions, Harry Erskine 
 endeavoured by several oblique hints to make him sensible 
 of the omission. His lordship, however, who had an acute 
 misapprehension where his pocket was in danger, affected to 
 receive all these innuendoes in a different sense, and at length, 
 seeking to turn the conversation to the war in which we 
 were then engaged, abruptly exclaimed, " I wonder what has 
 become of the French fleet ? " — " Just at present, my lord," 
 replied his waggish persecutor, " I believe it is, like ourselves, 
 co7ifined to port / " 
 
 A sportsman, who during the shooting season had gone to 
 pass a week with his friend in the country, on the strength of 
 a general invitation, soon found, by a gentle hint, that he 
 would have done better to wait for a special one. " I saw 
 some beautiful scenery," was the visitor's first remark, — " as 
 I came to-day by the upper road." " You will see some still 
 finer," was the reply, "as you go back to-morrow by the 
 Jower one." 
 
 HISTORY — the Newgate calendar of kings and rulers, 
 which finds no materials in the happiness or virtue of states, 
 and is therefore little better than a record of human crime 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 197 
 
 and misery. It may be doubted whether we should tempt 
 children to become misanthropes, by perusing it too early. 
 At a more mature age they may beneficially distinguish the 
 momentary triumph of crime, from the eternal lot of virtue. 
 To form an opinion of human nature from a perusal of 
 history, is like judging of a fine city by its sewers and cess- 
 pools. 
 
 HOLIDAYS — the Elysium of our boyhood : perhaps the 
 only one of our life. Of this truth Anaxagoras seems to 
 have been aware. Being asked by the people of Lampsacus, 
 before his death, whether he wished any thing to be done in 
 commemoration of him, — " Yes," he replied ; " let the boys 
 be allowed to play on the anniversary of my death." " Men 
 are but children of a larger growth," and, in this working-day 
 country, where we have neither half holidays enough, nor 
 even enough half-holidays, it might be well if some patriot 
 would bequeath to the whole labouring community a legacy 
 similar to that of Anaxagoras. 
 
 HOPE — though sometimes little better than the deferring 
 of disappointment, is, nevertheless, a compensation for many 
 of life's painful realities. Its fruition terminates its enjoy- 
 ment ; but why should we complain that expectation renders 
 us more happy than possession, since the former is a long- 
 enduring pleasure, and the latter only a brief regret ? — A 
 presentiment of coming gladness is the summit of terres- 
 trial felicity. Hope, however, is a better dependance, 
 at the outset, than at the close, of our career. To use the 
 language of Lord Bacon, it is a good breakfast, but an idle 
 supper. 
 
 All wings — like a cherub, Hope builds upon nothing, 
 floats, self-supported, like the clouds, catching every flitting 
 ray of the sun, and can raise itself to heaven, even by cling- 
 
198 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 ing to a film or gossamer. If there be any truth in the poet's 
 averment, that 
 
 " Hope springs eternal in the human breast," 
 who shall say that man is unhappy ? 
 
 HORSE — an article in the sale of which you may cheat 
 your own father without any imputation upon your honesty, 
 or your sense of filial duty. Dr. Burnet, having good reason 
 for disposing of his nag, got upon its back, and rode it up 
 and down, without succeeding, however, in concealing its 
 defects. " My good doctor," said the expected purchaser, 
 " when you want to take me in, you should mount a pulpit, 
 not a horse. 5 ' 
 
 HOUR-GLASS. — Eveiy thing, we are told, has its hour, 
 and an hour-glass offers no exception to the rule ; its period 
 of utility is but a short one. The sands gradually wear and 
 file away the aperture through which they pass, at the same 
 time that they themselves are constantly diminishing their 
 particles by friction and collision, so that they flow faster 
 and faster through the enlarged opening, and the machine, 
 turn it which way you will, becomes deranged and useless. 
 So it is with the state machine : by struggling against the 
 restraints of the monarchical or oligarchical principle, the 
 people do but too often enlarge and extend its capacity, 
 while they weaken and wear out themselves, until the proper 
 and useful balance between the two is entirely destroyed. 
 All governments, therefore, however well poised at first, have 
 as constant a tendency towards derangement as the hour- 
 glass. The balance may be restored in either case, by 
 diminishing the power that has been enlarged, and extending 
 that which has been lessened in the wear and tear of years — 
 this is Reform. Or you may wait till the machine is obliged 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 199 
 
 to be turned topsy-turvy and thrown into total disorder, or 
 dashed to pieces — this is Revolution. 
 
 HOUSEKEEPING, Regular.— When Sheridan, by the 
 assistance of his friends, was installed in a house in Savile 
 Row, he boasted to one of his relations how comfortably and 
 regularly he was living, so much so, that everything went on 
 like clock-work. — " That I can easily believe," was the reply, 
 " it goes on by tick ! tick ! tick ! " 
 
 HUMANITY — is much more shown in our conduct 
 towards animals, where we are irresponsible, except to 
 heaven, than towards our fellow-creatures, where we are 
 restrained by the laws, by public opinion, and by the fear of 
 retaliation. The more defenceless and humble the creature, 
 the greater is the merit of treating it kindly, since our tender- 
 ness must spring from a high principle or a feeling heart. 
 Show me the man that is a lover of animals, and I will 
 answer for his philanthropy. 
 
 How refined and considerate was the humanity of the 
 master butcher, who, in defending his drover for inflicting a 
 tremendous blow upon the eye of an ox, exclaimed, " What 
 harm could he do by striking the beast over the head, where 
 it does not injure the meat ? " 
 
 HUMILITY — the best evidence of real religion, as 
 .arrogance, self-conceit, and pretension, are the infallible 
 criteria of a Pharisaical devotion. 
 
 As the best laden branches bend 
 
 To Earth with an augmented press, 
 So do the fruits of virtue tend 
 
 To bow our hearts in humbleness ; 
 While the vain Pharisee, inflate 
 With all the puff 'd and windy state, 
 
2oo THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 That owes to emptiness its birth, 
 Like a balloon, a void inside, 
 Without — all varnish, pomp and pride, 
 Only seeks Heaven to be descried, 
 
 Admired and gaz'd at from the earth.— 
 What though the sound and sane Divine 
 
 Neglected lives, forgotten dies, 
 While sects and devotees combine 
 
 To puff some bigot to the skies ; 
 A diamond's still a precious stone 
 
 Although upon a dunghill cast, 
 And worthless dust, though upwards blown, 
 
 Retains its vileness to the last. 
 
 That false humility, which only stoops to conquer, and 
 prostrates itself that it may rise with the more certainty, 
 may be compared to bottled beer, which is laid flat in 
 order that it may get up. As the soil which is richest 
 in precious ores, generally presents the most barren sur- 
 face, so genuine humility, proud of nothing but the con- 
 sciousness of virtue, " Disdains to wear the prize she loves 
 to win." 
 
 HUNGER — that which gives the poor man his health 
 and his appetite, and the want of which often afflicts the 
 rich with satiety and disease. 
 
 HUNTINGDON.— The author of " The Bank of Faith," 
 however strange and unauthorized may have been his 
 doctrine, seems to have entertained most orthodox notions 
 as to the proper purposes of a flock, and the great objects of 
 the Spiritual Shepherd, if we may judge by the following 
 passage. " Who, but a fool, when God has used a shepherd 
 to call a flock together, would lead that flock from post to 
 pillar on purpose to shear them, and give the wool to men 
 whom I know not whence they be? Bless my God! these 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALE^. aoi 
 
 board-men have taught me better things. I keep my flock 
 at home, and shear them for my own profit." 
 
 HYPOCHONDRIA— the imaginary malady with which 
 those are taxed who have no real one. 
 
 HYPOCRISY — may assume the mask of vice as well as 
 of virtue. Such is the vanity of some men, that they would 
 rather be notorious, and even infamous, than unnoticed. 
 Lord Byron sometimes pretended to be more profligate than 
 he really was, in order, as he affirmed, that he might ingratiate 
 himself with the women ! Satirizing the sex is, generally, 
 spitting against the wind, which blows back in our own face, 
 what we vainly spurt forth against it. It has been said of 
 hypocrites, that they go to the Devil's abode by the road of 
 Paradise ; but this, at all events, evinces a better taste than 
 to journey towards the same destination by the most revolt- 
 ing road that can be selected. If it gives us a more favour- 
 able opinion of the Devil, to believe that he is not so black 
 as he is painted by others, it should deepen our contempt for 
 certain pseudo-human devils, when we learn that they are 
 not so black as they paint themselves. 
 
 There is much hypocrisy in affecting to give up the 
 pleasures of the world, from religious motives, when we only 
 withdraw from it because we find a greater gratification in 
 the pleasures of retirement. 
 
 " My dear children," said an old rat to his young ones ? 
 " the infirmities of age are pressing so heavily upon me, that 
 I have determined to dedicate the short remainder of my 
 days to mortification and penance, in a narrow and lonely 
 hole which I have lately discovered : but let me not interfere 
 with your enjoyments ; youth is the season for pleasure ; be 
 happy, therefore, and only obey my last injunction — never 
 to come near me in my retreat. God bless you all 1" 
 
202 THE TIN TRUMPE1 ; 
 
 Deeply affected, snivelling audibly, and wiping his paternal 
 eyes with his tail, the old rat withdrew, and was seen no 
 more for several days, when his youngest daughter, moved 
 rather by filial affection, than by that curiosity which has 
 been attributed to the sex, stole to his cell of mortification, 
 which turned out to be a hole, made by his own teeth, in — 
 an enormous Cheshire cheese ! 
 
 DLENESS — hard work for those who are not 
 used to it, and dull work for those who are. 
 Idleness is a moral leprosy, which soon eats its 
 way into the heart and corrodes our happiness, 
 while it undermines our health. Nothing is so 
 hard to do, as to do nothing. The hypochondriacal 
 Countess, who " envies every cinder-wench she sees," is 
 much more to be pitied than the toiling drudge, who " sighs 
 for luxury and ease." 
 
 Idleness is costly without being a luxury. Montaigne 
 always wound up the year's account of his expenses with the 
 following entry : " Item — for my abominable habit of idle- 
 ness — a thousand livres." 
 
 Idlers may deserve our compassion, but few things are 
 more misplaced than the contempt lavished upon them as 
 useless members of society ; sometimes such scorn is only 
 masked envy ; where it is real, it is wrong. All rich idlers 
 may be termed the representatives of former industry and 
 talent ; they must either have achieved independence by 
 their own exertions or by those of their ancestors, for almost 
 all wealth can be traced back to labour, or genius, or merit, 
 of some sort. And why do the revilers of the idle, labour 
 and toil with such perseverance? — that they may imitate 
 those whom they abuse, by acquiring an independence and 
 becoming themselves idle. The sight of luxurious ease is the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 203 
 
 best stimulus to exertion. To suppose that the pleasure of 
 overtaking is greater than that of pursuing the game, may be 
 a mistake, but it is a beneficial one, and keeps society from 
 stagnating. Rich idlers are the advancers of civilization, the 
 hest encouragers of industry — the surest patrons of literature 
 and the arts. Nor is there any thing invidious in their good 
 fortune, for every one may aspire to rival or surpass it, which 
 is not the case with hereditary distinctions. 
 
 We toil for leisure only to discover, when we have suc- 
 ceeded in our object, that leisure is a great toil. How quickly 
 would the working classes be reconciled to what they term 
 the curse of compulsory occupation, if they were doomed, 
 only for a short time, to the greater curse of compulsory 
 idleness ! Quickly would they find, that it is much better to 
 wear out than to rust out. 
 
 IDOL — what many worship in their own shape, who 
 would be ashamed to do so in any other. 
 
 IMAGINATION, Dreams of— an atonement for the 
 miseries of reality. Philosophers in all ages have delighted 
 in appealing from this incorrigible world to a creation of 
 their own, where all the evils to which mankind are sub- 
 jected, should be rectified or mitigated. It was with this 
 feeling that Plato, after the death of Socrates, wrote his 
 Atlantis. Tacitus, shocked at the profligacy and subjection 
 of his countrymen, endeavoured to shame them by holding 
 up to their imitation the wisdom, virtue and liberty of the 
 German forests. Sir Thomas More transported himself 
 from the tyranny of Henry VIII. into Utopia. Har- 
 rington established the republican government, for which 
 he panted, in his Oceana ; and Montesquieu developed his 
 own benevolent views in his fabulous history of the 
 Troglodytes. 
 
204 
 
 THE TIN TRUMPET 
 
 IMPRESSIONS, First — are sometimes involuntarily- 
 betrayed. Much of the spectator's mind may be gathered 
 by his almost unconscious exclamation when he encounters 
 any novel and striking sight, or is thrown into strange and 
 unexpected situations, which have as sure an effect as wine, 
 in eliciting the truth. Running against a surprise, is like 
 running against a post, — it forces the breath out of your 
 mouth, before you have time to consider how you shall 
 modulate it. Pope, the actor, who was a great epicure, 
 ejaculated in a transport, on his first catching the prospect 
 from Richmond Hill — " a perfect haunch, by heaven ! " One 
 of the French Savans, after risking his life in penetrating 
 into the square chamber of the great Egyptian pyramid, had 
 no sooner ascertained its dimensions, by holding up his 
 torch, than he cried to his companion. — " Quel emplacement 
 pour un Billa7'd / " 
 
 IMMORTALITY of modern authors — drawing in im- 
 agination upon the future, for that homage which the present 
 refuses to pay : — at best a protracted oblivion. A poet, 
 however illustrious in his day, is like the statue set up by 
 Nebuchadnezzar, the feet of which were of clay. A living 
 language is a painting, perpetually changing colour, and then 
 perishing ; a dead one is a marble statue — always the same. 
 Even this distant reversion of fame is denied to a modern, 
 for there is little chance that the English tongue of the 
 nineteenth century should live as a dead language after 
 it is dead as a living one. Some vainglorious author 
 boasted that his poems would be read when those of Pope 
 and Dryden were forgotten. " But not till then," added a 
 bystander. 
 
 INCONSISTENCY— the only thing in which men are 
 consistent. We are certainly compounded of two contrary 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 205 
 
 natures, impelling us, under different circumstances and 
 influences to actions apparently irreconcileable. To this 
 must it be attributed that the gravest and most saturnine, 
 will sometimes indulge in fits of jocularity, a fact which 
 T. H. would otherwise explain, but in my opinion with too 
 strict a leaning towards anatomy, by referring it to man's 
 possessing a funny bone and an os humerus. The stupidest 
 person I ever knew, a mere sensualist, a gourmand, and a 
 gourmet, composed one of the prettiest little poems I ever 
 read. Scaliger said that he would rather have written 
 Horace's Ode — " Quern tu, Melpomene? than be made King 
 of Arragon ; and for my own part, I would rather have 
 indited the following stanzas, than be promoted to the 
 Laureatship ! 
 
 That my friend, a dull, plodding fellow, whose great 
 business it had hitherto been to eat, drink, and sleep, should 
 spread his fancy's wings, and indulge in a poetical flight, is 
 perhaps less marvellous, than that the first and only essay of 
 his muse, should exhibit a tenderness so touching, combined 
 with aspirations so delicate and ethereal. But we must not 
 tantalise the reader by withholding from him any longer our 
 author's 
 
 LOVE SONG. 
 What mistress half so dear as mine, 
 
 Half so well dress'd, so pungent, fragrant, 
 Who can such attributes combine, 
 
 To charm the constant, fix the vagrant? 
 Who can display such varied arts, 
 
 To suit the taste of saint and sinner, 
 Who go so near to touch their hearts, 
 
 As thou, my darling, dainty dinner ? 
 
 Still my breast holds a rival queen, 
 A bright-eyed nymph, of sloping shoulders, 
 
 Whose ruddy cheeks and graceful mien, 
 Entrance the sense of all beholders. 
 
so6 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Oh ! when thy lips to mine are press'd, 
 
 What transports titillate my throttle ! 
 My love can find new life and zest, 
 
 In thee, and thee alone, my bottle ! 
 
 INDEPENDENCE, The boast of— is a trait of vulgarity, 
 and sometimes of insincerity, since professors are not always 
 performers. In reality we are all more independent than is 
 generally imagined, for the whole world can neither take from 
 us what nature has given, nor give us what nature has denied. 
 
 INDIGESTION— INDUSTRY— two things which were 
 never before found united. 
 
 INFALLIBILITY.— To adopt the doctrines of a pretended 
 infallible church, in order that you may be free from doubt 
 and error, is like putting out your eyes because you cannot 
 find your way, or have been misled by a Jack-o'-Lantern. 
 
 INFERIORS — a term which we are ever ready to apply 
 to those beneath us in station, without considering whether 
 it be applicable in any other sense. Many men may be our 
 superiors without being our equals ; and many may be our 
 nominal inferiors to whom we are by no means equal. 
 
 Inferiority, in others, whether of rank, fortune or talent,, 
 never offends, because it conveys a silent homage to our self- 
 love. This is the secret of condescension in the great. 
 
 INNOVATION — the unanswerable objection urged 
 against all improvement. We have already quoted the 
 dictum of Bacon — that a froward retention of custom is as 
 turbulent a thing as an innovation. This was not the 
 opinion of Ignatius Loyola, who in order to avoid any in- 
 novation in the shape of his boot, after having fractured his 
 leg, ordered a considerable part of the bone to be sawed off. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 207 
 
 thus proving himself to be a conservative of the true. dis- 
 criminating stamp. To say that all new things are bad, 
 is to say that all old things were bad in their com- 
 mencement, for the most ancient were once new ; and 
 whatever is now most firmly established was once in- 
 novation, not even excepting Christianity itself. Even 
 Moses sometimes altered his own laws, and others were 
 introduced into the religious ordinances of the Jews long 
 after his death. " The last chapters of Ezekiel contain a 
 representation of a more pure and holy service imparted to 
 the prophet in a vision ; and we cannot suppose that they 
 would account anything sinful among the improvements of 
 divine worship." * The forms of our Christian Church are 
 of human institution, and therefore liable to original error, 
 while they must necessarily require a new adaptation to the 
 changes in the times, unless we follow Loyola's plan, and cut 
 the world so as to fit the Church, instead of fitting the 
 Church to the world. Who would like to live under our 
 political government, such as it was when our " vener- 
 able Chureh establishment" was founded? And if the 
 former has required a constant series of improvements in 
 the course of centuries, are we to believe that experience 
 and greater enlightenment can add nothing to the perfect 
 excellence of the latter? — "I would only ask," said Lord 
 Bacon, two hundred years ago, " why the civil state should 
 be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws, made 
 every third or fourth year in parliament assembled, devis- 
 ing remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief; and con- 
 trariwise, the ecclesiastical state should still continue upon 
 the dregs of time, and receive no alteration ? " Are no 
 additional alterations required since Lord Bacon's time? 
 Unquestionably they are, and such have been the sentiments 
 
 * Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, by Michaelis, vol. i. p. 30. 
 
so8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of the most eminent and pious men who have considered 
 the subject. Hooker, in his "Ecclesiastical Polity," main- 
 tains broadly that — " Neither God being the author of laws, 
 nor his committing them to scripture, nor the continuance 
 of the end for which they are instituted, is reason sufficient 
 to prove they are unchangeable." * Was not the Reforma- 
 tion an innovation, and have not the clergy, ever since, been 
 virtually though not literally changing our Calvinistical 
 articles, by giving them an Armenian interpretation ? How 
 well does this illustrate the remark of a church dignitary : 
 " Creeds and confessions," says Dr. Paley, "however they 
 may express the persuasion or be accommodated to the con- 
 troversies or to the fears of the age in which they are com- 
 posed, in process of time, and by reason of the changes 
 which are wont to take place in the judgment of mankind 
 upon religious subjects, they come at length to contradict 
 the actual opinions of the church whose doctrines they 
 profess to contain." t 
 
 Let us advance from an archdeacon, for authority some- 
 times carries more weight than an argument, and hear what 
 a Bishop says, " The innovations introduced into our religious 
 establishment at the Reformation were great and glorious 
 for those times ; but some further innovations are yet 
 wanting, (would to God they may be quietly made !) to 
 bring it to perfection."! 
 
 Another Bishop confesses that, "it pleased God in his 
 unsearchable wisdom to suffer the progress of this great 
 work, the Reformation, to be stopped in the midway, and 
 the effects of it to be greatly weakened by many unhappy 
 divisions among the Reformed." § 
 
 * Third Book, section 10. 
 
 f Moral and Political Philosophy, b. vi. c. 10. 
 
 X Dr. Watson's, Bishop of Llandaff, Misc. Tracts, vol. ii. p. 17. 
 
 6 Dr. Louth's, afterwards Bishop of London, Visitation Sermon, 1758. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 209 
 
 Many other of the brightest ornaments of our Church 
 have maintained the necessity of a further reformation. 
 Tillotson, Patrick, Tenison, Kidder, Stillingfleet, Burnet, 
 all endeavoured to effect it, but in vain. The best friends of 
 the Church will be most anxious that the living successors of 
 these pious men may inherit their sentiments, and be more 
 successful in carrying them into execution ; especially when 
 they recollect that the cry of innovation is totally inapplicable. 
 That word signifies change by the introduction of novelty, 
 whereas the proposed alterations are mostly a return, or an 
 approach to the primitive forms and discipline of the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 INQUISITIVENESS — an itch for prying into other 
 people's affairs, to the neglect of our own ; — an ignorant 
 hankering after all such knowledge as is not worth knowing ; 
 — a curiosity to learn things that are not at all curious. 
 People of this stamp would rather be put to the question, 
 than not ask questions ; silence is torture to them. A 
 genuine quidnunc prefers false news to none ; he piques 
 himself upon having the very first information of things that 
 never happened. It is supposed that the Americans have 
 attained the greatest art in parrying inquisitiveness, because 
 they are more exposed to it ; but a well-known civic wag, at 
 a late period of political excitement, maintained a defensive 
 colloquy with a rustic inquisitive, which could hardly have 
 been excelled by any Transatlantic performer. In travelling 
 post, he was obliged to stop at a village to replace a horse's 
 shoe, when the Paul Pry of the place bustled up to the carri- 
 age window, and, without waiting for the ceremony of intro- 
 duction, exclaimed — " Good morning, Sir ! — horse cast a 
 shoe, I see — I suppose, Sir, you be going to — " Here he 
 paused, expecting the name of the place to be supplied ; but 
 the citizen answered — " You are quite right, Sir ; I generally 
 
 v 
 
2io THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 go there at this season." — " Ay — hum — do ye ? — and no doubt 
 you be come now from — " — " Right again, Sir ; I live there." 
 — " Oh, ay, do ye ? But I see it be a London shay ; pray, 
 Sir, is there anything stirring in London ?" — " Yes ; plenty of 
 other chaises, and carriages of all sorts." — " Ay, ay, of course ; 
 but what do folks say ? " — " Their prayers every Sunday." — 
 " That is not what I mean ; I wish to know whether there 
 is anything new and fresh ? " — " Yes, bread and herrings." 
 — " Anan ! you be a queer chap. Pray, Muster, may I ask 
 your name ? " — " Fools and clowns call me ' muster/ but 
 I am, in reality, one of the frogs of Aristophanes, and my 
 genuine name is Brekekekex Koax. Drive on, postillion." 
 
 INSCRIPTIONS, Monumental.— What a strange people 
 are the Americans ! Instead of setting up splendid cenotaphs 
 for kings and heroes, the oppressors or the destroyers of their 
 species, they erect monuments to the benefactors of mankind, 
 containing no other inscription than the name of the de- 
 ceased, and the improvement or discovery for which he was 
 celebrated. At Charleston, in South Carolina, there is a 
 monument, made after the model of that of Scipio at Rome, 
 with the following inscription — 
 
 " Eli Whitney, 
 The Inventor of the Cotton Gin." 
 
 The superficial reader who may never have heard of this 
 useful machine, and who cannot clear his mind from the 
 ludicrous or ignoble associations connected with the word, 
 will smile, perhaps, as he peruses it; but let us hear the 
 opinions of an American judge upon the subject. 
 
 " How few of the inscriptions in Westminster Abbey could 
 be compared with that ! Who is there, that, like him, has 
 given his country a machine, the product of his own skill, 
 which has furnished a large part of its population, from 
 
OR, HEAD3 AND TALES. sn 
 
 childhood to old age, with a lucrative employment ; by which 
 their debts have been paid off; their capitals increased; 
 their lands trebled in value. It may be said, indeed, that 
 this belongs to the physical and material nature of man, and 
 ought not to be compared with what has been done by the 
 intellectual benefactors of mankind, — the Miltons, the Shak- 
 speares, and the Newtons. But is it quite certain that any 
 thing short of the highest intellectual vigour — the brightest 
 genius — is sufficient to invent one of these ■ extraordinary 
 machines ? Place a common mind before an oration of Cicero 
 and a steam engine, and it will despair of rivalling the latter 
 as much as the former ; and we can by no means be per- 
 suaded that the peculiar aptitude for combining and applying 
 the simple powers of mechanics, so as to produce these mar- 
 vellous operations, does not imply a vivacity of imagination, 
 not inferior to that of the poet and orator. And then, as to 
 the effect on society, the machine, it is true, operates, in the 
 first instance, on mere physical elements, to produce an accu- 
 mulation and distribution of property. But do not all the 
 arts of civilization follow in the train ? and has not he who 
 has trebled the value of the land, created capital, rescued the 
 population from the necessity of drudgery, covered a waste 
 with plenty ; has he not done a service to the country of the 
 highest moral and intellectual character ? Prosperity is the 
 parent of civilization and all its refinements ; and every family 
 of prosperous citizens, added to the community j is an addition 
 of so many thinking, inventing, moral and immortal natures." 
 These are the words of Mr. Justice Johnson, of South 
 Carolina, and I will not injure their effect by a single com- 
 ment beyond the expression of a hope, that as we have 
 begun a similar course in this country, by setting up a statue 
 to Watt, the inventor or perfecter of the steam engine, we 
 may continue in this career, and only erect public monuments 
 to those who have really deserved well of their country. 
 
212 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 INSTINCT, Animal — the exertion of mental power, 
 without the exercise of reason or deliberation : — the im- 
 planted principle that determines the will of brutes, and is 
 generally limited to the great objects of nature — self-preser- 
 vation, the procurement of food, and the continuance of the 
 species. An intelligent being, having a motive in view for 
 the performance of any particular operation, will set about it 
 either similarly to others, or in a different mode, according to 
 circumstances, his views and powers of action being almost 
 infinitely varied ; but irrational beings never deviate from 
 the instincts with which they are born, and which are adapted 
 to their particular economy. Hence, animals are stationary, 
 while man is progressive. Beavers construct their habita- 
 tions, birds their nests, bees their hive, and the spider its 
 web, with an admirable ingenuity ; but the most sagacious of 
 them cannot apply their skill to purposes beyond the sphere 
 of their particular wants, nor do any of them improve, in the 
 smallest degree, on their predecessors. Exactly as they 
 respectively built at the time of creation, so will they con- 
 tinue to build until the end of the world. To illustrate the 
 contrary tendency, and the progressiveness of man in his 
 habitations, we should compare a Hottentot's kraal with St. 
 Peter's, or St. Paul's. 
 
 INSTINCTS, Human — natural prejudices, to reject the 
 influence of which, in the education of youth, is, itself, one 
 of the most unreasonable of prejudices. " Why should we 
 scruple," asks Mrs. Barbauld, " to lead a child to right 
 opinions, in the same way by which nature leads him to right 
 practices ? He may be left to find out that mustard will 
 bite his tongue, but he must be prejudiced against ratsbane." 
 
 INSTITUTIONS— must be fitted to the different ages of 
 the world's mind, just as his clothes are altered and adjusted 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 213 
 
 to the different ages of an individual's body. When we have 
 outgrown either, they should be cast aside ; unless we wish 
 our movements to be cramped, or that which restrains them 
 to be violently rent asunder. 
 
 Institutions may be compared to certain fruits : when un- 
 ripe, no storm disturbs them; when ripe, a puff will blow 
 them down. What have they to expect when they are 
 rotten ? The answer will be found in Schedule A of the 
 Reform Bill. 
 
 INTOLERANCE — being irreligious for the sake of 
 religion, and hating our fellow-creatures, out of a pretended 
 love of their Creator. Intolerance has more lives than a cat ; 
 you cannot even starve it to death. Deprive its right hand 
 of its cunning, by taking away the sword wherewith it smote 
 infidels ; its nostrils of the soul-rejoicing odour of a roasting 
 heretic; its ears of the delightful groans of imprisoned or 
 tormented non-conformists ; its heart of what it best loved, 
 in Corporation and Test Acts, and Catholic disabilities, it 
 will still pick up its crumbs of comfort, and contrive to sub- 
 sist upon the remaining modicum of religious pains and 
 penalties, or of legal punishments for the freedom of opinion. 
 And while thus employed, the fiend Intolerance boasts of her 
 godlike qualities, and especially of her marvellous liberality. 
 Supported by jails and judges, she employs the sword of law 
 (not justice) to clip the wings of thought, and then com- 
 placently exclaims to her mutilated victim — " Behold ! you 
 are free as the air — you may fly whithersoever you please : 
 who so liberal, so generous, so tolerant, as I ? " 
 
 IVY — a vegetable corruptionist, which, for the purpose of 
 its own support, attaches itself, with the greatest tenacity, to 
 that which is the most antiquated and untenable, and the 
 fullest of holes, flaws, and imperfections. 
 
2i4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 EALOUSY — tormenting yourself, for fear you 
 should be tormented by another. " Why," asks 
 Rochefoucauld, " does not jealousy, which is born 
 with love, always die with it?" He would have 
 found an answer to this question, had he reflected 
 that self-love never dies. Jealousy is the greatest of misfor- 
 tunes, and excites the least pity. 
 
 JEWS, The modern — are proofs, we are told, of the truth 
 of Christianity. Are they not, at the same time, proofs of 
 the want of Christianity in those who profess, without feel- 
 ing, its charitable doctrine ? As the Scriptures, when they 
 enjoin love of our neighbour, carefully warn us to put the 
 most enlarged construction upon the word, it is difficult to 
 reconcile the virulent denunciations, and the incentives to 
 scorn and hatred of the Jews, which so many of the clergy 
 infuse into their sermons, either with Christianity, good taste, 
 or right feeling. Our Saviour was a Jew; the greater portion 
 of the Bible is Jewish ; the ten commandments, which con- 
 stitute the basis of our morality, are Jewish. Why, then, 
 should we dislike our fellow-subjects, and spiritual half- 
 brethren, because they happen to be Jews, more even than 
 we hate Turks and Pagans, who are utter aliens and 
 infidels? 
 
 All persecution is demoralizing, and the Jews have been 
 long exposed to its worst species, — that of public prejudice, 
 aggravated by civil and other disabilities. Abolish all reli- 
 gious pains, penalties, and distinctions, and this oppressed 
 race will quickly become elevated in the moral, as well as in 
 the political scale. 
 
 What a picturesqueness do these descendants of Abraham 
 impart to the otherwise monotonous surface of society ! Far 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 215 
 
 and wide do we travel, to behold the inanimate mouldering 
 remains of Greece and Rome; while in the Israelites, our 
 neighbours and fellow-townsmen, we may contemplate the 
 living ruins of a nation still more ancient and illustrious. 
 Who can survey their adust complexions, oriental physiogno- 
 mies, and dark-flowing beards, converting them into unfaded 
 portraits of the old Scripture characters, without being 
 carried back, in imagination, to the crowded streets of 
 Solyma, and the glories of King David? 
 
 There are moral points of view, also, in which they cannot 
 be contemplated without exciting respect and admiration in 
 every candid mind. For eighteen hundred years, under per- 
 secutions more relentless and unremitting than the world 
 ever witnessed, have they clung to their ancient faith with an 
 indomitable and unparalleled heroism. Martyrdom is com- 
 paratively nothing; — death, the affair of a moment, is easily 
 confronted; — but the life -long death of continual oppression, 
 scorn, and hatred, all which might be avoided by the utter- 
 ance of a single word, none but a high-principled soul can 
 endure. Their inflexible tenacity, in this respect, presents a 
 grand, I had almost said a sublime spectacle. " But they 
 are so sordid," objects blind Prejudice. You have made 
 them so, may be replied, by leaving no other career open to 
 them but that of money getting. Besides, they are not 
 sordid, where any principle or duty prompts them to be 
 otherwise. While' we ourselves are forming societies to 
 compel a due observance of the Sabbath, on the part of 
 Christian tradesmen, the Jews, a whole people of traders and 
 dealers, already debarred from the seventh day of the week, 
 spontaneously deprive themselves of another, from a sense of 
 religious duty. The poorest, the most starving of their tribe, 
 shuts up his miserable shop on the Saturday, and willingly 
 sacrifices a sixth part of his income upon the altar of his 
 religion. Are such men to be taunted by the sanctified 
 
216 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 dealers and traders, who cannot refrain from transacting 
 business, even on an annual Fast-day? 
 
 By the necessity under which they labour, of submitting 
 to test oaths and declarations, opposed to their conscience, 
 the Jews are excluded from the common privileges of citizen- 
 ship, from the learned professions, and other channels of 
 honourable distinction ; all in manifest contravention of that 
 principle of our reformed constitution, which declares, that 
 religious difference shall not form any ground of civil dis- 
 ability. And yet we are not persecutors ! What odious 
 cant ! 
 
 JOKES — the cayenne of conversation, and the salt of life. 
 " A joke's prosperity," says Shakspeare, " lies in the ear of 
 the hearer;" and indeed it is sometimes exceedingly difficult 
 to pronounce whether it be a good one or a bad one, risibly 
 speaking, for a bon mot may be too witty to be pleasant, or 
 at least to elicit laughter; while a poor pleasantry, by the 
 help of some ludicrous turn, or expression, or association of 
 ideas, may provoke cachinnation, a gorge deploy ee. Nay, 
 there are cases, in which a joke becomes positively good from 
 its being so intolerably bad, and is applauded, in the inverse 
 ratio of its merit, as the greatest honours are sometimes 
 showered upon men who have the least honour. The admi- 
 ration excited by the highest order of wit is generally serious, 
 because it sets us thinking. It was said of a crafty Israelite, 
 who deserted the Hebrew faith, without embracing that of 
 the Christians, and yet endeavoured to make both parties 
 subservient to his selfish views, that he resembled the blank 
 leaf between the Old and New Testament, belonging to 
 neither, and making a cover of both. No one would laugh 
 at this; it is exactly that description of wit which has been 
 defined " an unexpected association of apparently dissimilar 
 M?as, exciting pleasure and surprise." Lord Byron was 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 217 
 
 once asked by a friend, in the green room of Drury Lane 
 Theatre, whether he did not think Miss Kelly's acting in the 
 "Maid and the Magpie" exceedingly natural? — "I really 
 cannot say," replied his lordship ; " I was never innocent of 
 stealing a silver spoon." This is drollery rather than wit, 
 and excites our laughter, without claiming any portion of our 
 admiration. 
 
 One of our poets, a remarkably cadaverous-looking man, 
 recited a poem, descriptive of a country walk, in which the 
 following couplet occurred : — 
 
 " The redbreast, with his furtive glance, 
 Comes and looks at me askance ;" — 
 
 upon which a wag exclaimed — " Gad ! if it had been a 
 carrion-crow, he would have stared you full in the face f 
 a remark so humorous and unexpected, that it was received 
 with an unanimous shout of laughter. Here the absurdity 
 of the idea, if it did not amount to wit, was something 
 better, or, at all events, more stimulative of the risible 
 faculties. 
 
 JUDGMENT — a faculty of which very few people have 
 enough to discover that they want more. In forming a 
 judgment of each other, the sexes usually proceed upon the 
 falsest and most deceitful grounds. If a woman be struck 
 by a man's exterior, she invariably thinks well of his morals 
 and his talents : gain her love, and you secure her esteem ; 
 she judges of everything by the impression made upon 
 herself, and in the credulity that prompts her to believe 
 what she wishes, is easily led away by her confiding and 
 affectionate nature. Men, sexually speaking, are still more 
 blind and rash in their judgment, or, rather, in their total 
 want of it. If they are smitten by a pretty face, they inquire 
 no further, and ask but one question — Will you have me ? 
 
si8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 They marry the face, of which the beauty is to last, perhaps, 
 for one year only, — at most for ten, — and they know little or 
 nothing of the mind with which they are to be associated 
 until death. In balancing the respective motives of the 
 sexes, the advantage is, as usual, all on the side of the 
 females. Both are precipitate, and both wrong ; but women 
 are misled by their trust and their affections, while men 
 fall into the same error from the influence of their passions 
 and their senses. If any of my male readers doubt this 
 judgment, let them doubt their own. 
 
 ING — according to the doctrine of despots and 
 their worshippers, the hereditary proprietor of 
 a nation ; — according to reason, its account- 
 able first magistrate. Monarchs are the spoilt 
 children of fortune ; and, like the juvenile 
 members of the class, are often wayward, peevish, and ill 
 at ease. We talk of being " as happy as a king ;" but which 
 of us is not happier, — at least, in love and friendship, the 
 great sweeteners of life ? There is no courtship in Courts. 
 A king goes a wooing in the person of his privy councillors ; 
 marries one whom he never saw, in order to please the 
 nation, of which he is the ruler, only to be its slave ; and is 
 generally cut off from those domestic enjoyments that con- 
 stitute the highest charm of existence. Friendship cannot 
 offer him a substitute, for equality is its basis ; and he who 
 wears a crown is at once prevented by station, and pro- 
 hibited by etiquette, from indulging in any communion 
 of hearts. Truly he ought to be exempted from all other 
 taxes, since he pays quite enough for his painful pre- 
 eminence. 
 
 A wise man, however well "qualified to shine in Courts, 
 will seldom desire to share their dangerous splendour. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 219 
 
 Diogenes, while he was washing cabbages, seeing Aristippus 
 approach, cried out to him — " If you knew how to live upon 
 cabbages, you would not be paying court to a tyrant." — " If 
 you knew how to live with kings," replied Aristippus, " you 
 would not be washing cabbages." 
 
 " Of all kinds of men," says a French writer, " God is 
 least beholden to kings ; for he does the most for them, 
 and they the least for him." And yet the patriot king y 
 who confers happiness upon a whole nation, must render 
 a more acceptable service to the Deity than any other 
 mortal can proffer. 
 
 KISSES — admit of a greater variety of character than 
 perhaps even my female readers are aware, or than Joannes 
 Secundus has recorded. Eight basial diversities are men- 
 
 tioned in Scripture ; viz 
 
 Salutation . 
 Valediction . 
 Reconciliation 
 Subjection . 
 Approbation 
 Adoration . 
 Treachery . 
 Affection . . 
 
 -The kiss of 
 
 . Sam. xx. 41. 1 Thess. v. 26. 
 
 . Ruth ii. 9. 
 
 . 2 Sam. xiv. 33. 
 
 . Psalms ii. 12. 
 
 . Proverbs ii. 4. 
 
 . 1 Kings xix. 18. 
 
 . Matt. xxvi. 49. 
 
 . Gen. xlv. 15. 
 
 But the most honourable kiss, both to the giver and receiver, 
 was that which Queen Margaret of France, in the presence 
 of the whole Court, impressed upon the lips of the ugliest 
 man in the kingdom, Alain Chartier, whom she one day 
 found asleep, exclaiming to her astonished attendants — " I 
 do not kiss the man, but the mouth that has uttered so 
 many charming things." Ah ! it was worth while to be a 
 poet in those days. 
 
22o . THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 KITCHEN — the burial-place of the epicure's health and 
 fortune. — "What a small kitchen !" exclaimed Queen Eliza- 
 beth, after going over a handsome mansion. — " It is by 
 having so small a kitchen, that I am enabled to keep so 
 large a house," replied its owner. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE — a molehill removed from the moun- 
 tain of our ignorance. Where shall we discover a finer 
 illustration of disinterestedness than the outcry raised 
 
 against the taxes on knowledge by Alderman , who can 
 
 never be affected by the impost. To call the newspaper 
 stamp, however, a tax upon knowledge, is to term the duty 
 upon gin a tax upon provisions. Away with the former, 
 nevertheless, in order that men of respectability and talent 
 may enter into the arena, and compete with the authors 
 of the illegal penny and twopenny publications. If danger 
 be apprehended from the darkness or perversion of the 
 popular mind, what security so effectual as that of en- 
 lightening and guiding it? How preposterous to clamour 
 against the poison, and interdict the antidote ! If the 
 people will endanger their own constitution, and that of 
 the country, by plucking sour apples from the forbidden 
 tree of knowledge, the only way to cure them of their 
 propensity, is to allow them free access to a sweeter and 
 better fruit. 
 
 " What will be the best method of saving this small 
 beer from depredation ? " said a lady to her butler. — 
 " By placing a cask of strong beer at the side of it," was 
 the reply. 
 
 A knowledge of useful things, of which others are igno- 
 rant, is never considered an excuse for an ignorance of 
 trifles that are generally known. 
 
 After a scholar has attained a certain age, no knowledge 
 that you can let in upon his mind will do him any harm. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 221 
 
 Cattle may be admitted into an orchard, to graze it after the 
 trees are grown up, but not when they are young. 
 
 Partial instruction may be a partial evil, but universality 
 of knowledge, however high the standard, will never take 
 the poor out of their sphere. Elevating the lower, without 
 depressing the upper classes, it will be an unmixed good to 
 both. But if knowledge be power, will not its universality 
 give a dangerous ascendancy to the multitude? No — for 
 the few will be still wiser than the many. The most igno- 
 rant will then run the greatest risk. In a general illlumina- 
 tion, it is only the unlighted windows that are pelted and 
 broken by the mob. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE of the world — the fancied wisdom of 
 those whose reflections are created by a mirror. There is 
 a class of persons who think they evince prodigious pene- 
 tration into the human heart, when they ascribe every action 
 to the worst possible motives, taking it for granted that all 
 men are sordid, profligate, or designing, all women dissi- 
 pated, thoughtless, and inconstant. This misanthropical 
 ignorance they presume to term knowledge of the world. 
 So it may be, but it is of that world only which is comprised 
 in their own persons. 
 
 AMPS. — When these were brought in at night, 
 the ancient Greeks used to salute them with the 
 words, Xatpe, <pi\ov <pws — Salve arnica lux! — 
 The human owls of modern times, when the 
 intellectual light is spreading around them, 
 are so far from hailing it with a blessing, that they retire 
 to their cells and lurking places, and hoot at it as a 
 pestilent innovation. While stabbing at the liberties and 
 
222 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 happiness of mankind, they would rather cry out, with 
 Macbeth,— 
 
 " Come, thick night, 
 And pall thee in the dun nest smoke of hell, 
 That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
 Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, 
 To cry hold ! hold ! " 
 
 LANDSCAPE GARDENING— artificial nature: the 
 finest of the fine arts. He who lays out grounds and 
 gardens, calling new beauties into existence, not only for 
 his own gratification, but for that of his contemporaries and 
 successors, is exercising a benevolent power which makes 
 him a species of creator. Like all the pure and simple plea- 
 sures, this is an enjoyment which rewards itself, and retains 
 its attraction under all circumstances, and at every period of 
 life. The word Paradise is synonymous with garden, and 
 the Elysium of the ancients consisted of sylvan fields. 
 Happy the man who can secure a living apotheosis, amid the 
 beatitudes of a terrestrial garden ! 
 
 LANGUAGES — in several instances have derived their 
 names from a single word. Sismondi, writing on the lite- 
 rature of the Trouveres, says, " The Provencal was called 
 the Langued'Oc, and the Wallon the Langue d'Oz'l, or d'Oui, 
 from the affirmative word of each language, as the Italian 
 was then called the Langue de Si, and the German the 
 Langue de YaP Not only to a whole language, but to a 
 whole life may the word yes give its colour and character, as 
 many an unhappy wife has found to her cost. 
 
 Language, which is the uniting bond and the very medium 
 of communion between men, is at the same time, by the great 
 variety of tongues, the means of severing and estranging 
 nations more than anything else. In this respect it may be 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 223 
 
 compared to the Ourang-outang, which, according to the 
 travelling showman, " forms the connecting link which sepa- 
 rates mankind from the human race." 
 
 LAUGH, A horse — the sorry hack upon which buffoons 
 and jesters are fain to ride home, when they want to make a 
 retreat, and are at a loss for any other conveyance. Such 
 Merry Andrews save their credit as the Romans did their 
 Capitol, by the cackling of geese. To succeed in this object 
 all expedients are considered fair ; to win the laugh, is to 
 win the battle ; if you cannot, therefore, check-mate your 
 adversary by reasoning, dumb-found him by your superior 
 learning, or surpass him in the brilliancy of your wit, knock 
 him down by a poor pun, the worse the better ; set the 
 example of a hearty laugh, for this is catching, though wit is 
 not, and make your escape while the company are exercising 
 their risible muscles ; they will generally be with you, for 
 they like to see a conqueror capsized. The late Jack Taylor, 
 of pleasant memory, who was no mean proficient in thus 
 turning the tables upon his opponent, when he found himself 
 losing, has recorded one of his exploits. He was rapidly 
 losing ground in a literary discussion, when the opposite 
 party exclaimed, " My good friend, you are not such a rare 
 scholar as you imagine ; you are an every-day man." "Well, 
 and you are a weak one," replied Taylor, who instantly 
 jumped upon the back of a horse laugh, and rode victoriously 
 over his prostrate conqueror. 
 
 LAUGHTER — a faculty bestowed exclusively upon man, 
 and one which there is, therefore, a sort of impiety in not 
 exercising as frequently as we can. We may say with Titus, 
 that we have lost a day if it have passed without laughing. 
 The pilgrims at Mecca consider it so essential a part of their 
 devotion, that they call upon their prophet to preserve them 
 
224 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 from sad faces. " Ah ! M cried Rabelais, with an honest 
 pride, as his friends were weeping around his death-bed, " if 
 I were to die ten times over, I should never make you cry- 
 half so much as I have made you laugh." " Risn inepto res 
 ineptiornulla est" says an anti-risible reader; but if laughter 
 be genuine, and consequently a means of innocent enjoyment, 
 can it be inept ? * 
 
 LAW, English — see Hocus Pocus, and Chicanery. The 
 following character, or rather sentence of condemnation, was 
 pronounced upon it, by one well acquainted with his subject 
 — the lecturer over the remains of the late Jeremy Bentham. 
 In answer to the question, what is this boasted English law, 
 which, as we have been told for ages, renders us the envy 
 and admiration of surrounding nations, he replies, " The 
 substantive part of it, whether as written in books or ex- 
 pounded by judges, a chaos, fathomless and boundless ; the 
 huge and monstrous mass being made up of fiction, tauto- 
 logy, technicality, circuity, irregularity, and inconsistency ; 
 the admiiiistrative part of it, a system of exquisitely con- 
 trived chicanery ; a system made up of abuses ; a system 
 which constantly places the interest of the judicial minister 
 in opposition to his duty ; so places his interest in opposi- 
 tion to his duty, that in the very proportion in which it serves 
 his ends, it defeats the ends of justice ; a system of self- 
 authorised and unpunishable depredation ; a system which 
 encourages mendacity, both by reward and punishment ; a 
 system which puts fresh arms into the hands of the injurer, 
 to annoy and distress the injured ; in a word, a system which 
 maximises delay, sale, and denial of justice." And yet, what 
 an outcry was raised by the disinterested reverers of our 
 time-hallowed institutions, when Lord Brougham attempted 
 to sweep some of the filth from the mere margin of this sink 
 of iniquity. His reforms were too rough, forsooth. They 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 225 
 
 would have him cleanse the Augean stable with a white 
 cambric handkerchief. 
 
 Most lawsuits are a juggle, whose sole object seems to be 
 the plunder of both plaintiff and defendant by the prolonga- 
 tion of their quarrel. " Strange," says Old Fuller in his 
 "Worthies," "that reason continuing always the same, law, 
 grounded thereon, should be capable of so great alteration." 
 It is not grounded upon reason, but upon the artifices of 
 pettifoggers, and therefore its perversions and metamor- 
 phoses are infinite. In Republicd corrufitissima, plurimtz 
 leges. When Justinian compiled his Institutes, the writings 
 on the civil law alone amounted to many camel loads. Ours 
 may be reckoned by ship loads, and the money annually ex- 
 pended upon law and lawyers (not upon justice), may be 
 counted by millions. Such is the magnitude and vitality of 
 this hundred headed Hydra, that we may well doubt the 
 power of Lord Brougham to crush it, even though he dip his 
 arrows in the monster's gall. Hercules as he is, he will find 
 it difficult to outlaw the lawyers. 
 
 LAWYERS — generally know too much of law to have a 
 very clear perception of justice, just as divines are often too 
 deeply read in theology, to appreciate the full grandeur and 
 the proper tendencies of religion. Losing the abstract in the 
 concrete, the comprehensive in the technical, the principal 
 in its accessories, both are in the predicament of the rustic, 
 who could not see London for the houses. 
 
 It has been invidiously said, that lawyers pass their time 
 in taking advantage of their contemporaries ; but if we may 
 credit the authority of Foote, they sometimes outwit the 
 undertaker even after their death. That facetious person 
 being once summoned into the country, by the relatives of a 
 respectable practitioner, to whom he had been appointed 
 executor, was asked what directions should be given respect- 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 ing the funeral ? " What may be your practice in the 
 country," said the wag, " I do not exactly know ; but in 
 London, when a lawyer dies, his body is disposed of in a 
 very cheap and simple manner. We lock it up in a room 
 over night, and by the next morning it has always totally- 
 disappeared. Whither it has been conveyed we cannot tell 
 to a certainty ; but there is invariably such a strong smell of 
 brimstone in the chamber, that we can form a shrewd guess 
 at the character of the conveyancer." 
 
 LEARNING — very often a knowledge of words, and an 
 ignorance of things ; a common act of memory, which may 
 be exercised without common sense. A mere scholar is 
 generally known by his unacquaintance with everything but 
 languages, which have so filled his head, that they have left 
 room for nothing else. He mistakes the steps for the temple 
 of Minerva; the shrine for the goddess herself; and is as 
 proud of his mind's empty purse, as if there were money in 
 it ! Pedantry's jargon will no more improve our under- 
 standings, than the importunate clink of a smoke-jack will 
 fill our bellies. The elaborate triflings of scholiasts and 
 commentators, the jingling sophistries of logic, and what has 
 been technically termed the learning of the schools, all of 
 which were so many antidotes to sound sense and reflection, 
 may well be thrown overboard, when many a member of our 
 Mechanics' Institutes, possesses useful knowledge that might 
 puzzle a whole convent of college monks. 
 
 Of all learning the most difficult department is to un- 
 learn. Drawing a mistake or prejudice out of the head, is as 
 painful as drawing a tooth, and the patient never thanks the 
 operator for the " demptzts per vim mentis gratissimns error" 
 No man likes to admit that his favourite opinion (perhaps 
 the only child of his mind, and cherished accordingly) is an 
 illegitimate one. Sluggish intellects arc ever the most obsti- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 227 
 
 nate, for that which it has cost us much to acquire, it costs 
 us much to give up ; and the older we get, the more tena- 
 ciously we cling to our errors, as those weeds are most diffi- 
 cult to eradicate that have had the longest time to root 
 themselves. Harvey could find no physician, turned of 
 forty, who would admit the circulation of the blood. Num- 
 bers of these quadragenarian owls are now to be found in 
 every profession, while we have Jesuits enough of all ages, 
 who sigh for the suppressed Inquisition, whenever a political 
 or religious Galileo promulgates any truth that threatens to 
 interfere with established falsehoods. These buzzards have 
 yet to acquire the most useful of all learning — that of un- 
 learning. 
 
 LIARS — verbal forgers, stiflers of truth, and murderers 
 of fact. They will sometimes attempt to conceal their 
 failing by affecting a scrupulous adherence to veracity. B — , 
 who rarely shamed the Devil, once said of his friend, "Jack 
 is a good fellow, but, it must be confessed, he has his failings. 
 I am sorry to say so, but I will not tell a lie for any man. 
 Amicus Jack — sed magis a?nica Veritas, — I love my friend, 
 but I love truth still more." — " My dear B — /' said a by- 
 stander, laying his hand upon his shoulder — " I never ex- 
 pected that you would have preferred a perfect stranger to 
 an old acquaintance." 
 
 The ci-devant civic dandy, who, from his rising in the east 
 and setting in the west, or, perhaps, from his want of per- 
 sonal beauty, quasi lucus a non hccendo, had acquired the 
 nickname of Apollo, once received a visit from a peer, whose 
 propensity to fibbing is well known. — " I find," said his lord- 
 ship, who is apt to mistake impertinence for jocularity, 
 " that you are going to the fancy-ball to-night, and I pre- 
 sume you will appear in the character of Apollo." — " I had 
 
 some such idea," replied , " and I am glad your lord- 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 ship has called, because you can. now accompany me as my 
 lyre:' 
 
 LIBELj Law of— a libel upon the law. Even under the 
 tyranny of some of the Roman emperors, there seems to 
 have been a greater latitude of speech and writing than is 
 permitted by the laws of modern England. Adverting to the 
 reigns of Trajan and Aurelius, Tacitus says — " Rara te?n- 
 ftorum felicitate, 7ibi senlire , qup velis, et qua sentias dicere 
 licet" — " By the rare happiness of those days you might 
 think what you wished, and speak as, you thought." 
 
 LIBELLERS— literary bravos, supported by illiterate 
 cowards. If the receiver of stolen goods be worse than 
 the thief, so must the purchaser of libels be more culpable 
 than their author. As the peruser of a slanderous journal 
 would write what he reads, had he the talent, so the actual 
 maligner would become a malefactor, had he the opportunity 
 and the courage. — " Maledicus a. malefico, nisi occasione, non 
 dijfert" says Quinctilian. — "He who stabs you in the dark, 
 with a pen, would do the same with a pen-knife, were he 
 equally safe from detection and the law." 
 
 A libeller's mouth has been compared to that of a volcano 
 — the lighter portions of what it vomits forth are dissipated 
 by the winds; the heavier ones fall back into the throat 
 whence they were disgorged. The aspersions of libellers 
 may, perhaps, be better compared to fullers' earth, which, 
 though it may seem to dirt you at first, only leaves you more 
 pure and spotless, when it is rubbed off. 
 
 LIBRARY — a precious catacomb, wherein are embalmed 
 and preserved imperishably, the great minds of the dead who 
 will never die. 
 
 "In the library of the world," says .Champfort, "men 
 
• OR, HEADS AND TALES. 229 
 
 have hitherto been ranged according" to the form, the size, 
 and the binding. The time is coming when they will take 
 rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic 
 merits." 
 
 LIFE— a momentary convulsion between two tranquil 
 eternities; — an avenue to death, as death is the gate that 
 opens to a new and more enduring life. Our tables and 
 bills of mortality, within the last hundred years, show a 
 remarkable and unprecedented increase in the average 
 duration of human life ; while our capacities for taking 
 advantage of this prolonged term have, at least, been doubled 
 within the term mentioned. The existence of a rational and 
 improvable creature, is not to be measured by years and 
 months, but by ideas and sensations — by what we can see, 
 enjoy, learn, and accomplish during our pilgrimage upon 
 earth, in which point of view every educated individual is 
 as a Methuselah when compared to his remote ancestors. 
 Look how we have conquered space and time, and all the 
 elements that surround us, making an impalpable vapour, 
 in England alone, perform the work of many millions of men, 
 and thus leading us to the cheering hope that iron and steam 
 may eventually supersede, to a considerable degree, the 
 employment of human and animal bones and muscles, so 
 that the meanest artizan may have leisure for recreation and 
 the culture of his mind. Consider how the pangs of separa- 
 tion are diminished and the affections solaced, by those 
 facilities of rapid travelling which may be said to have 
 almost brought the uttermost ends of the earth together, 
 and to have made each nation participate in the advantages 
 of all. Easy is it now for any man or woman to be a literal 
 cosmopolitan. A week takes us to St. Petersburg — four 
 weeks to Grand Cairo — a few months to the East Indies, or 
 to any part of the world. 
 
2 3 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 It is the activity of the mind, not the functional vitality of 
 the body, that constitutes life. By the enlargement of our 
 ideas, and the general diffusion of knowledge, consequent 
 upon our increased powers of locomotion and comparison, 
 we may condense a whole existence into a narrow compass 
 of time, and enjoy a dozen such lives as were passed by the 
 most enlightened of our ancestors. And yet, doubly precious 
 as this state of being has become, how many are compelled 
 to throw away life for a livelihood, et propter vitam vivendi 
 -perdere causas. Nevertheless, their mere vitality, even in 
 spite of their discontents, is an inexhaustible source of gra- 
 tification, and might be rendered much more so, would they 
 but contemplate it in the proper light. " Enjoy thy existence," 
 says Jean Paul Richter, " more than thy manner of exist- 
 ence, and let the dearest object of thy consciousness be the 
 consciousness of life." 
 
 Though nothing is so closely allied as life to death, no two 
 things are so utterly different from each other. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians considered every part of the 
 universe to be endowed with an inherent life, energy and 
 intelligence; worshipping the active phenomena of nature, 
 without discriminating cause from effect. They believed the 
 elements themselves to be animated ; and why should they 
 not be ? — All of them have motion and a voice — the great 
 constituents of vitality : and, if not themselves alive, they are 
 all instinct with life. _ 
 
 Life has been compared to tragedy, comedy, and farce. 
 It was reserved for Talleyrand to consider it as a one-act 
 piece. " I know not why the world calls me a wicked man," 
 said Rulhiere, " for I never, in the whole course of my life, 
 committed more than one act of wickedness." — " But when 
 will this act be at an end?" asked Talleyrand. 
 
 LIGHT, The new. — It was said of Burns, that the light 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. . 231 
 
 which led him astray, was light from heaven ; a false and 
 unguarded assertion, for no light from heaven can ever lead 
 man astray. The spiritual new light is a Jack-o'-lantern, 
 which sometimes lures its followers into quagmires and pit- 
 falls ; or it may be the glitter of gold, and the dazzling lustre 
 of worldly greatness, by which they are lighted to dignities 
 and high places. Of this latter we will cite an instance from 
 the Life of Andrew Melville, by Dr. M'Crie:— " When 
 Cowper was made Bishop of Galloway, an old woman, who 
 had been one of his parishioners, and a favourite, could not 
 be persuaded that her minister had deserted the Presby- 
 terian cause. Resolved to satisfy herself, she paid him a 
 visit at the Canongate, where he had his residence, as Dean 
 of the Chapel Royal. The retinue of servants, through which 
 she had to pass, staggered the good woman's confidence, 
 and being ushered into a room, where the bishop sat, she 
 exclaimed — i Oh, Sir ! what's this ? — and ye ha' really left 
 the guid cause, and turned prelate ! ' — ' Janet ! ' said the 
 bishop, ' I have got a new light on this subject.' — ' So I 
 see/ replied Janet ; ' for when ye was at Perth, ye had but 
 ae candle, and now ye ha' got twa before ye. — That's your 
 new light.' " 
 
 LIGHT — like the circulating blood, which returns to the 
 heart, is supposed to return to the sun, after having performed 
 the functions for which it was emitted from that body. Even 
 so will the soul, our intellectual light, return to its divine 
 source, when released from the body, to whose earthly pur- 
 poses it has ministered. 
 
 LITERATI — may be divided into two classes : those who 
 live to study, and those who study to live ; the former, 
 tending to elevate literature, and the latter, to degrade it. 
 The first generally survive their own death ; the last often 
 
232 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 die and are forgotten in their lifetime, for that which is 
 written for the day must expire with it. 
 
 LOVER— see Lunatic. A man, who, in his anxiety to 
 obtain possession of another, has lost possession of himself. 
 Lovers are seldom tired of one another's society, because 
 they are always speaking of themselves. Let us not, how- 
 ever, disparage this fond infatuation, for all its tendencies 
 are elevating. He who has passed through life without ever 
 being in love, has had no spring-time — no summer in his 
 existence ; his heart is as a flowering plant which hath never 
 blown — never developed itself — never put forth its beauty 
 and its perfume — never given nor received pleasure. 
 
 The love of our youth, like Kennel coal, is so inflammable, 
 that it may be kindled by almost any match; but if its 
 transient blaze do not pass away in smoke, its flame, too 
 bright and ardent to last long, soon exhausts and consumes 
 itself. The love of our maturer age is like coke, which, when 
 once ignited, burns with a steady and enduring heat, emitting 
 neither smoke nor flame. 
 
 No wonder that we hear so much of the sorrows of love, 
 for there is a pleasure even in dwelling upon its pains. — 
 Revelling in tears, its fire, like that of naphtha, likes to 
 swim upon water. 
 
 Lovers must not trust too implicitly to their visual organs. 
 A tender swain once reproached his inamorata with suffering 
 a rival to kiss her hand, a fact which she indignantly denied. 
 — " But I saw it? — " Nay, then," cried the offended fair, " I 
 am now convinced you do not love me, since you believe your 
 eyes in preference to my word." 
 
 LUCK, Good and bad — is but a synonyme, in the great 
 majority of instances, for good and bad judgment. The 
 prudent, the considerate, and the circumspect, seldom com- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TAL.ES. 233 
 
 plain of their ill luck; but I should shrewdly suspect the 
 discretion of the grumbler who protested that fortune always 
 made clubs or spades trumps, when he had not a single 
 black card in his hand ; and that even when he fell back- 
 wards he was sure to break his nose. 
 
 LUXURY — the conqueror of conquerors — the consump- 
 tion of states — the dry-rot of the constitution — the avenger 
 of the defeated and the oppressed. Poverty, conquest, wealth, 
 luxury, decay ; such is the Round-Robin history of the 
 world — 
 
 ' ' Sasvior armis 
 Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem. " 
 
 Mandeville's position, that private vices are public benefits, 
 and that individual luxury, even when pushed to a faulty 
 excess, is a public advantage, cannot be maintained ; for 
 nothing that is injurious to one, can be good for many. 
 
 AGNAN1MITY— is as often littleness as 
 greatness of mind. There is a cheap species, 
 which prompts us to feel complacently towards 
 our enemy when he has enabled us to make a 
 happy repartee. 
 We forgive him all his previous attempts to lower us, 
 because he has unintentionally furnished us with a momen- 
 tary triumph ; so completely does our love of self predomi- 
 nate, even over our dislike of others. The more cruelly we 
 have mauled our poor vanquished opponent, the more ten- 
 derly do we regard him; and if we have well nigh blown 
 him to atoms, we feel as if we could never again injure a hair 
 of his head. As there is no magnanimity so cheap, there is 
 none so gratifying as this, for we like to purchase our virtues 
 
234 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 on good terms. One of Sheridan's creditors, after having 
 long and vainly dunned him, at length suggested, that if he 
 could not discharge the principal of the debt, he might, at 
 least, pay the interest. "No," said the wag ; "it is not my 
 interest to pay the principal, nor my principle to pay the 
 interest." Though he had previously hated the man for his 
 vulgar importunity, it is recorded that he took him into favour 
 from that moment, and actually defrayed the amount of his 
 bill, a rare instance of preference, considering that he seldom 
 discharged any debt till he paid that of nature. 
 
 Pleasant enough was the magnanimity of the person who, 
 being reproached with not having revenged himself of a 
 caning he had received, exclaimed, " Sir, I never meddle with 
 what passes behind my back ! " 
 
 MAN — an image of the Deity, which occasionally acts as 
 if it were anxious to fill up a niche in the temple of the Devil. 
 The only creature which, knowing its mortality and immor- 
 tality, lives as if it were never to die, and too often dies as if 
 it were never to live : — the sole being gifted with reason, the 
 only one that acts irrationally : — the nothing of yesterday — 
 the dust of to-morrow. Man is a fleeting paradox, which the 
 fulness of time alone can explain ; a living enigma, of which 
 the solution will be found in death. 
 
 MARRIAGE — a state of which it is unnecessary to 
 describe the great happiness, for two reasons ; — first, because 
 it would be superfluous to those who are in the enjoyment of 
 its blessings : and secondly, because it would be impossible 
 to those who are not. 
 
 Habituated as we are to the association of doves with loves, 
 it seems startling to learn, on the authority of Pliny, that the 
 Romans considered the hawk a bird of particularly good 
 omen in marriage, because it never eats the hearts of other 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 235 
 
 birds j thus intimating that no differences, or quarrels, in the 
 marriage state, ought ever to reach the heart. 
 
 The difficulty of effecting marriages, in these times of 
 expensive establishments, is one of the great evils of our 
 social system, and the principal source of corrupt manners. 
 Malthus's prudential restraint is actively operative among the 
 middling, and utterly neglected by the lower classes ; hence 
 the predominance of celibacy in the one, and of a redundant 
 population and consequent pauperism, in the other. 
 
 " Marriage," says Dr. Johnson, " is the best state for a 
 man in general ; and every man is a worse man, in propor- 
 tion as he is unfit for the married state." It may be doubted, 
 however, whether another of his positions could be main- 
 tained — " that marriages in general would be as happy, and 
 often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, 
 upon a due consideration of character and circumstances, 
 without the parties having any choice in the matter." 
 
 In the pressure that now weighs upon all persons of limited 
 fortune, sisters, nieces, and daughters, are the only commo- 
 dities that our friends are willing to bestow upon us for 
 nothing, and which we cannot afford to accept, even gratui- 
 tously. It seems to have been the same, at a former period, 
 in France. Maitre Jean Picard tells us that, when he was 
 returning from the funeral of his wife, doing his best to look 
 disconsolate, such of the neighbours as had grown-up 
 daughters and cousins came to him, and kindly implored 
 him not to be inconsolable, as they could give him a second 
 wife. — " Six weeks after," says Maitre Jean, " I lost my cow, 
 and, though I really grieved upon this occasion, not one of 
 them offered to give me another.". 
 
 It has been recorded by some anti-connubial wag, that 
 when two widowers were once condoling together, on the 
 recent bereavement of their wives, one of them exclaimed, 
 with a sigh, " Well may I bewail my loss, for I had so few 
 
236 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 differences with the dear deceased, that the last day of my 
 marriage was as happy as the first." — " There I surpass you," 
 said his friend, " for the last day of mine was happier / " 
 
 MARTYR — that which all religions have furnished in 
 about equal proportions, so much easier is it to die for 
 religion than to live for it. Our high church conservatives 
 cry out, with a lusty voice, " Touch not that which has been 
 cemented by the blood of the holy martyrs ! " Why, these 
 very martyrs, whose devotedness proves nothing but their 
 sincerity, died in the cause of reform ; and yet their example 
 is cited as a warning against it ! If their blood appeal to us 
 at all, it may rather be supposed to cry out against the 
 monstrous abuses of that Christianity, for whose cause they 
 became martyrs. 
 
 MASQUERADE — a synonyme for life and civilised 
 society. There are two sorts of masquerade, simulation, or 
 pretending to be what you are not : and dissimulation, or con- 
 cealing what you are ; and we are all mummers under one or 
 the other of these categories, excepting a few performers at the 
 two extremes of life— those v/ho are above, and those who 
 are beneath all regard for appearances. As a secret consci- 
 ousness of their defects is always prompting hypocrites to 
 disguise themselves in some assumed virtue, the only way to 
 discover their real character, is to read them backwards, like 
 a Hebrew book. 
 
 Many masqueraders on the stage of real life betray them- 
 selves by overacting their part. With religious pretenders 
 this is more especially the case, and for an obvious reason : 
 they increase the outward and visible sign, in proportion as 
 they feel themselves deficient in the inward and spiritual 
 grace. Can we wonder at their sanctimonious looks, and 
 puritanical severity ? Even when they flounder and fail in 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 237 
 
 their hypocrisy, they would persuade us that their very blun- 
 ders proceed from a heavenly impulse. They remind one of 
 the fat friar, who being about to mount his mule, called upon 
 his patron saint to assist him, and gave such a vigorous 
 spring at the same time, that he fell over on the other side, 
 when he exclaimed with an air of complacency, " Hallo ! the 
 good saint has helped me too much ! " 
 
 So difficult is it to avoid overacting our part, that we can- 
 not always escape this error, when we are agents and acces- 
 saries, instead of principals, in imposing upon the world. 
 The Regent of France, intending to go to a masquerade in 
 the character of a lackey, and expressing an anxious wish to 
 remain undetected the Abbe Dubois, suggested that this 
 object might easily be attained, if he would allow him to go 
 as his master, and to give him two or three kicks before 
 the whole company. This was arranged accordingly, but 
 the pretended master applied his foot so rudely and so often, 
 that the Regent was fain to exclaim, " Gently, gently, Mon- 
 sieur l'Abbe' ! you are disguising me too much ! " 
 
 MASTER. — Being our own master, means that we are at 
 liberty to be the slave of our own follies, caprices and passions. 
 Generally speaking, a man cannot have a worse or more 
 tyrannical master than himself. As our habits and luxuries 
 domineer over us, the moment we are in a situation to indulge 
 them, few people are in reality so dependent as the inde- 
 pendent. Poverty and subjection debar us from many vices 
 by the impossibility of giving way to them : when we are 
 rich, and free from the domination of others, we are corrupted 
 and oppressed by ourselves. There was some philosophy, 
 therefore, in the hen-pecked husband, who being asked why 
 he had placed himself so completely under the government 
 of his wife, answered, " To avoid the worse slavery of being 
 under my own." 
 
238 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 MEDICAL PRACTICE— guessing at Nature's intentions 
 and wishes, and then endeavouring to substitute man's. 
 
 MELANCHOLY— ingratitude to Heaven.— 
 
 O impious ingrates ! cast your eyes 
 
 On the. fair earth — the seas — the skies, 
 
 And if the vision fail to prove 
 
 A Maker of unbounded love ; — 
 
 If in the treasures scattered wide, 
 
 To guests of earth, and air, and tide ; 
 
 If in the charms, with various zest, 
 
 To every sense of man addressed, 
 
 Ye will not see the wish to bless 
 
 With universal happiness, 
 
 Nor judge that mortals best fulfil 
 
 A bountiful Creator's will, 
 
 When, with a cheerful gratitude, 
 
 They taste the pleasures He has strew'd, 
 
 What can avail the wit, the sage, 
 
 The love of man, the sacred page, 
 
 When, by such evidence assailed, 
 
 Your God and all His works have failed ! 
 
 As a good antidote to gloomy anticipations, we should all 
 of us do well to recollect the saying of Sir Thomas More, — 
 
 1 ' If evils come not — then our fears are vain, 
 And if they do — fear but augments the pain." 
 
 MEMORY. — Rochefoucauld says, " Every one complains 
 of his memoiy, no one of his judgment." And why ? Be- 
 cause we consider the former as depending upon nature; and 
 the latter upon ourselves. Alleged want of memory is a most 
 convenient refuge for our self-love, since we can always throw 
 it as a cloak over our ignorance. It is astonishing how 
 much people are in the habit of forgetting what they never 
 knew. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 239 
 
 " Strange," says the same writer, " that we can always 
 remember the smallest thing that has happened to ourselves, 
 and yet not recollect how often we have repeated it to the 
 same person." 
 
 It is a benevolent provision of nature, that in old age the 
 memory enjoys a second spring — a second childhood, and 
 that while we forget all passing occurrences, many of which 
 are but painful concomitants of old age, we have a vivid and 
 delightful recollection of all the pleasures of youth. Many a 
 greybeard, who seems to be lost in vacancy, as he sits silently 
 twiddling his thumbs, is in fact chewing the mental cud of 
 past happiness, and enjoying a tranquil gratification, which 
 youngsters might well envy. 
 
 Objects become shadowy to the bodily eye, as they are 
 more remote, but to the mental eye of age, the most distant 
 are the most distinct. A man of eighty may forget that he 
 was seventy, but he never forgets that he was once a boy. 
 Who can doubt the immortality of the soul, when we see that 
 the mind can thus pass out of bodily decrepitude into a state 
 of rejuvenescence ? for this process amounts to a Palinge- 
 nesia — a partial new birth out of a partial decease, prepara- 
 tory to a total resurrection out of total dissolution. 
 
 MINDS. — Large ones, like pictures, are seen best at a 
 distance. Their beauties are thus enhanced, and their 
 blemishes concealed, — a process which is reversed by a close 
 inspection. This is the reason, to say nothing of envious 
 motives, why we generally undervalue our contemporaries., 
 and overrate the ancients. 
 
 MIRROR.— John Taylor relates in his Records, that 
 having restored sight to a boy who had been born blind, the 
 lad was perpetually amusing himself with a hand-glass, 
 calling his own reflection his little man, and enquiring why 
 
2 4 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 he could make it do everything that he did except shut its 
 eyes. A French lover, making a present of a mirror to his 
 mistress, sent with it a poetical quatrain, which may be thus 
 paraphrased : — ■ 
 
 " This mirror my object of love will unfold, 
 Whensoe'er your regard it allures : — 
 Oh ! would, when I'm gazing, that I might behold 
 On its surface the object of yozirs/" 
 
 But the following old epigram, on the same subject, is in a 
 much finer strain : — 
 
 " When I revolve this evanescent state, 
 How fleeting is its form, how short its date ! 
 My being and my stay dependant still, 
 Not on my own, but on another's will ; 
 I ask myself, as I my image view, 
 Which is the real shadow of the two ?" 
 
 MISADVENTURE, Mischance, and Misfortune— are all 
 the daughters of Misconduct, and sometimes the mothers 
 of Goodluck, Prosperity, and Advancement. To be thrown 
 upon one's oAvn resources, is to be cast into the very lap 
 of Fortune ; for our faculties then undergo a develop- 
 ment, and display an energy, of which they were previously 
 unsusceptible. Our minds are like certain drugs and per- 
 fumes, which must be crushed before they evince their 
 vigour, and put forth their virtues. Lundy Foot, the cele- 
 brated snuff manufacturer, originally kept a small tobacco- 
 nist's shop at Limerick. One night, his house, which was 
 uninsured, was burnt to the ground. As he contemplated 
 the smoking ruins on the following morning, in a state bor- 
 dering on despair, some of the poor neighbours, groping 
 among the embers for what they could find, stumbled upon 
 several canisters of unconsumed, but half-baked snuff, which 
 

 OR, HEADS AND TALES. 241 
 
 they tried, and found it so grateful to their noses, that they 
 loaded their waistcoat pockets with the spoil. Lundy Foot, 
 roused from his stupor, at length imitated their example, and 
 took a pinch of his own property, when he was instantly 
 struck by the superior pungency and flavour it had acquired 
 from the great heat to which it had been exposed. Trea- 
 suring up this valuable hint, he took another house in a place 
 called Black Yard, and preparing a large oven for the pur- 
 pose, set diligently about the manufacture of that high-dried 
 commodity, which soon became widely known as Black 
 Yard snuff; a term subsequently corrupted into the more 
 familiar word — Blackguard. Lundy Foot, making his cus- 
 tomers pay literally through the nose, raised the price of his 
 production, took a larger house in Dublin, and ultimately 
 made a handsome fortune„by having been ruined. 
 
 MISANTHROPE.— Quite unworthy of Goethe's genial 
 and penetrative mind is his misanthropical remark, that 
 " each of us, the best as well as the worst, hides within him 
 something, some feeling, some remembrance, which, if it 
 were known, would make you hate him." More consonant 
 would it have been to truth, as well as to an enlightened 
 spirit of humanism, had he reversed the proposition, and 
 exclaimed, in the words of Shakspeare — 
 
 ' ' There is some soul of goodness in things evil, 
 Would men observingly distil it out ! " 
 
 Law's observation, "that every man knows something 
 worse of himself than he is sure of in others," savours not of 
 misanthropy, but of that doubly beneficial feeling which 
 inculcates individual humility, and universal charity. 
 
 Rochefoucauld, and misanthropical writers of the same 
 class, cannot succeed in giving any man, of a generous and 
 
 R 
 
242 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 clear intellect, an unfavourable opinion of human nature. 
 Like the workers of tapestry, who always behold the wrong 
 side, they themselves may see nothing but unfinished out- 
 lines, coarse materials, crooked ends, and glaring defects, 
 and yet produce a portrait which, to those who contemplate 
 it in front, and from a proper point of view, shall be full of 
 grace, beauty, harmony, and proportion. 
 
 MISER — one who, though he loves himself better than 
 all the world, uses himself worse ; for he lives like a pauper, 
 in order that he may enrich his heirs, whom he naturally 
 hates, because he knows that they hate him, and sigh for his 
 death. In this respect, misers have been compared to 
 leeches, which, when they get sick and die, disgorge, in a 
 minute, the blood they have been so long sucking up. La 
 Bruyere tersely says — " Jeune on conserve pour la meil- 
 lesse : vieux on kpargne fioitr la mort." 
 
 Pithy enough was the reply of the avaricious old man, 
 who, being asked by a nobleman of doubtful courage what 
 pleasure he found in amassing riches which he never used, 
 answered — " Much the same that your lordship has in wearing 
 a sword." 
 
 Perhaps the severest reproach ever made to a miser, was 
 uttered by Voltaire. At a subscription of the French 
 Academy for some charitable object, each contributor 
 putting in a loins d'or, the collector, by mistake, made a 
 second application to a member noted for his penuriousness. 
 — " I have already paid," exclaimed the latter, with some 
 asperity. — " I beg your pardon," said the applicant : " I have 
 no doubt you paid ; I believe it, though I did not see it." — 
 " And I saw it, and do not believe it," whispered Voltaire. 
 
 MISFORTUNE— is but another word for the follies, 
 blunders, and vices, which, with a greater blindness, we 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 24.3 
 
 attribute to the blind goddess, to the fates, to the stars, to 
 any one, in short, but ourselves. Our own head and heart 
 are the heaven and earth which we accuse, and make respon- 
 sible for all our calamities. 
 
 The prudent make the reverses by which they have been 
 overthrown supply a basis for the restoration of their fallen 
 fortunes, as the lava which has destroyed a house often fur- 
 nishes the materials for rebuilding it. Fools and profligates, 
 on the contrary, seek solace for their troubles, by plunging 
 into sensual and gross pleasures, as the wounded buffalo 
 rolls himself in the mud. 
 
 The misfortune of the mischievous and evil-minded, is the 
 good fortune of the virtuous ; the failure of the guilty, is the 
 success of the innocent : to pity, therefore, the former, is, in 
 some sort, to injure the latter, and to destroy the effect of 
 the great moral lesson afforded by both. Let us keep our 
 sympathies for the sufferings of the good. 
 
 All men might be better reconciled to their fate, if they 
 would recollect that there are two species of misfortune, at 
 which we ought never to repine ; — viz., that which we can, 
 and that which we cannot, remedy; regret being, in the 
 former case, unnecessary, in the latter, unavailing. 
 
 The same vanity which leads us to assign our misfortunes 
 or misconduct to others, prompts us to attribute all our lucky 
 chances to our own talent, prudence, and forethought. Not 
 a word of the fates or stars when we are getting rich, and 
 everything goes on prosperously. So deeply-rooted in our 
 nature is the tendency to make others responsible for our 
 own misdeeds, that we lapse into the process almost uncon- 
 sciously. When the clergyman has committed a peccadillo, 
 he is doubly severe towards his congregation, and does vica- 
 rious penance in the persons of his flock. Men scold their 
 children, servants, and dependants, for their own errors ; 
 coachmen invariably punish their horses after they them- 
 
244 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 selves have made any stupid blunder in driving them ; and 
 even children, when they have tumbled over a chair, revenge 
 themselves for their awkwardness, by beating and kicking 
 the impassive furniture. Wine, the discoverer of truth, some- 
 times brings out this universal failing in a manner equally 
 signal and ludicrous. An infant being brought to christen 
 to a country curate, at a time when he was somewhat over- 
 come by early potations, he was unable to find the service oi 
 Baptism in the book ; and, after fumbling for some time, 
 peevishly exclaimed — " Confound the brat ! what is the 
 matter with it ? I never, in all my life, knew such a trouble- 
 some child to christen ! " 
 
 MISSIONS, Religious — an attempt to produce, in dis- 
 tant and unenlightened nations, a uniformity of opinion on 
 subjects upon which the missionaries themselves are at fierce 
 and utter variance ; thus submitting a European controversy 
 of 1800 years to the decision of a synod of savages. Where 
 the missionary begins with civilising and reclaiming the 
 people among whom he is cast, he cannot fail to improve 
 their temporal condition, and he is likely to contribute to 
 their spiritual welfare ; neither of which objects can be 
 attained by the hasty zealot, who commences by attempting 
 to teach the five points of Calvinism to barbarians unable 
 to count their five fingers. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose, that the rapid conversion 
 of the whole world to Christianity forms any part of the 
 scheme of Providence, since, in eighteen centuries, so little 
 comparative progress has been made towards its accom- 
 plishment. Still less shall we be warranted in concluding, 
 that all those who remain in spiritual darkness will be 
 eternally shut out from the mercy of their Creator, if we duly 
 perpend the spirit of the Scriptures — "The Gentiles, which 
 have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 245 
 
 law." Rom. ii. 14. — " God is no respecter of persons; but in 
 every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, 
 is accepted with him." Acts x. 34, 35. — " If there be a 
 willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, 
 and not according to that he hath not." 2 Cor. viii. 12. 
 And St. Paul seems to intimate that the Lord will accom- 
 plish his own work of conversion in his own time — " I will 
 put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts. 
 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and 
 every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord ; for all 
 shall know me, from the least to the greatest." Heb. viii. 
 10, 11. 
 
 It is to be feared, that the conduct of the Europeans among 
 savage nations, especially if we recollect the horrors of the 
 slave trade, will plead much more powerfully than the Gospel 
 precepts of our missionaries. Even where our example has 
 not nullified our doctrine, it is difficult to adapt the latter to 
 the capacities of barbarians. We learn from " Earle's Resi- 
 dence in New Zealand," that when some of the missionaries 
 were expounding the horrors of Tophet and eternal fire, their 
 auditors exclaimed — " We will have nothing to say to your 
 religion. Such horrid punishments can only be meant for 
 white men. We have none bad enough among us to deserve 
 them ; but, as we have listened to you patiently, perhaps you 
 will give us a blanket !" 
 
 MODERATION, Religious— an unattainable medium, 
 since the world seems to be divided between the enthusiastic 
 and the indifferent, or those who have too much and those 
 who have too little devotion. One party make religion their 
 business ; the other make business their religion. Two com- 
 mercial travellers meeting at an inn near Bristol, and con- 
 versing upon spiritual subjects, one asked the other whether 
 he belonged to the Wesleyan Methodists. " No," replied the 
 
246 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 man of business — " what little I do in the religious way is in 
 the Unitarian line." 
 
 MONASTERY — a house of ill-fame, where men are 
 seduced from their public duties, and fall naturally into 
 guilt, from attempting to preserve an unnatural innocence. 
 "It is as unreasonable for a man to go into a Carthusian 
 Convent for fear of being immoral, as for a man to cut off his 
 hands for fear he should steal. When that is done, he has 
 no longer any merit, for though it is out of his power to 
 steal, he may all his life be a thief in his heart. All 
 severity that does not tend to increase good or prevent evil, 
 is idle." 
 
 MONEY — a very good servant, but a bad master. It 
 may be accused of injustice towards mankind, inasmuch as 
 there are only a few who make false money, whereas money 
 makes many men false. We hate to be cheated, not so much 
 for the value of the commodity, as, because it makes others 
 appear superior to ourselves. Being defrauded would be 
 nothing, were it not so galling to be outwitted. Crates, the 
 Greek philosopher, left his money in the hands of a friend, 
 with orders to pay it to his children in case they should be 
 fools ; for, said he, if they are philosophers, they will not 
 want it. Money is more indispensable now than it was then, 
 but, still, a wise man will have it in his head rather than his 
 heart. 
 
 MORALITY — keeping up appearances in this world, or 
 becoming suddenly devout when we imagine that we may 
 be shortly summoned to appear in the next. 
 
 MORAL CHOLERA.—" It is easier," says St. Gregory 
 Nazianzen, "to contract the vices of others than to impart to 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 247 
 
 them our own virtue ; just as it is easier to catch their dis- 
 eases than to communicate to them our own good health." * 
 Our anxiety to avoid bodily infection can only be exceeded 
 by our total indifference to that which is mental. There is a 
 moral, as well as a physical cholera, and yet, while we are 
 frightened to death at the approach of the one, we voluntarily 
 expose ourselves, during our whole life, to the attacks of the 
 other. One of our jails was lately emptied because it con- 
 tained a single case of Asiatic cholera ; all the rest are kept 
 crowded, until the patients, labouring under moral cholera, 
 shall have corrupted the whole mass of their fellow prisoners. 
 It seems to be the object of these institutions to propagate 
 and disseminate the miasmata of vice, instead of preventing 
 their circulation. Such of our malefactors as have the 
 disease, in the natural way, are employed to inoculate the 
 others, and then we wonder that there is a plague in the 
 land. If an offender have broken one of the commandments,, 
 we guard against a repetition of the crime by sending him to 
 a place where he not only learns to break the other nine, but 
 to break prison also, when he presently begins to exercise 
 his newly-acquired knowledge upon the community. We 
 hang and transport rogues on a large scale, but we produce 
 them on a still more extensive one. 
 
 MOTHERS. — Four good mothers have given birth to 
 four bad daughters : — Truth has produced hatred ; Success, 
 pride ; Security, danger ; and Familiarity, contempt. And, 
 on the contrary, four bad mothers have produced as many 
 good daughters, for Astronomy is the offspring of astrology ; 
 Chymistry of alchemy ; Freedom, of oppression ; Patience, of 
 long-suffering. 
 
 * Facilius est vitium contrahere quam virtutem impertire ; quemad- 
 modum facilius est morbo alieno infici, quam sanitatem largiri. 
 
248 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 MOUNTAINEERS — are rarely conquered, not so much 
 on account of the facility for defence afforded by their craggy 
 heights, as from their hardier habits and greater patriotism. 
 In the rich lowlands, art becomes the principal pursuit ; art 
 leads to riches and luxury, and these to enervation and sub- 
 jection. On the high and barren places, man's occupations 
 render him more conversant with nature, an intercourse 
 which inseparably attaches him to " the mountain nymph — 
 sweet liberty." — When in danger of being worsted, High- 
 landers are renovated, like Antaeus, by a touch of their native 
 earth ; and so might we, when attacked by the cares and 
 sickliness of money-getting and money-spending, if we would 
 only quit our crowded cities, take a walk in the fields, and 
 touch the earth. When the leafless and embittering metro- 
 polis turns our moral honey into gall, we may always 
 reverse the process by straying amid the flowers of the 
 country. 
 
 MOUTH — a useless instrument to some people, in its 
 capacity, by the organs of speech, of rendering ideas audible ; 
 but of special service to them in its other capacity of render- 
 ing victuals invisible. 
 
 MUSES, The — nine blue-stocking old maids, who seem 
 to have understood all arts except that of getting husbands, 
 unless theit celibacy may be attributed to their want of 
 marriage portions. These venerable young ladies are loudly 
 and frequently invoked by poetasters, writers in albums and 
 annuals, and other scribblers; but, like Mungo in the farce, 
 each of them replies, " Massa, massa ! — the more you call, 
 the more me won't come." One of our tourists, at Paris, 
 observing that there were only statues of eight muses on the 
 Opera House, which was then incomplete, inquired of a 
 labouring mason what had become of the ninth. " Monsieur, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 249 
 
 je ne vous dirois pas" replied the man ; — " mat's firobable- 
 ment die £ amuse avec Afiollon!" — An English opera- 
 tive would hardly have given such an answer. A gentle- 
 man once expressed his surprise that, in so rich a literary 
 country as England, the Muses should not attain their 
 due honours. — " Impossible ! " cried a whist-playing old 
 lady — " They are nine, and of course cannot reckon 
 honours." 
 
 MUSIC. — "Music, like man himself, derives all its dignity 
 from its subordination to a loftier and more spiritual power. 
 When, divorcing itself from poetry, it first sought to be a 
 principal instead of an accessory, to attach more importance 
 to a sound than to a thought, to supersede sentiment by 
 skill, to become, in short, man's play-fellow, rather than his 
 assistant teacher, a sensual instead of an intellectual gratifi- 
 cation, its corruption, or at least its application to less 
 ennobling purposes, had already commenced. As the art of 
 music, strictly so called, was more assiduously cultivated, as 
 it became more and more perplexed with complicated in- 
 tricacies, only understood by a few, and less and less an 
 exponent of the simple feelings and sentiments that are 
 intelligible to all, it may be said to have lost in general 
 utility and value, what it gained in science, and to have 
 been gradually dissolving that union between sound 
 and sense, which imparted to it its chief interest and 
 influence." 
 
 So entirely do I agree with the writer from whom the 
 above extract is taken, that I have often rode back after a 
 morning concert, to my residence in the country, that I might 
 enjoy the superior pleasures of natural music. It was upon 
 such an occasion, while strolling in the fields, that my 
 thoughts involuntarily arranged themselves, as the novelists 
 say, into the following stanzas : — 
 
THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 I. 
 
 There's a charm and zest when the singer thrills 
 The throbbing breast with his dulcet trills, 
 And a joy more rare than the sweetest air 
 
 Art ever combined, 
 When the poet enhances, 
 By beautiful fancies, 
 The strain, and entrances 
 
 Both ear and mind. 
 Thy triumph, O music ! is ne'er complete, 
 Till the pleasures of sense and of intellect meet. 
 
 II. 
 
 Delights like these, to the poor unknown, 
 Are reserved for the rich and great alone, 
 In diamonds and plumes, who fill the rooms 
 
 Of some grand abode, 
 And think that a guinea, 
 To hear Paganini 
 Or warbling Rubini, 
 
 Is well bestow'd ; 
 Since then, only then, they the pleasures share 
 Of science, voice, instrument — equally rare. 
 
 III. 
 
 But the peasant at home, in gratuitous boon, 
 Plas an opera dome and orchestral saloon, 
 With melody gay from the peep of day 
 
 Until evening dim : 
 Whenever frequented, 
 With flowers it is scented, 
 Its scenes all invented 
 
 And painted by Him, 
 Who suspended its blazing lamps on high, 
 And its ceiling formed of the azure sky. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Oh ! what can compare with the concert sublime, 
 When waters, earth, air, all in symphony chime ? 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES-. 251 
 
 The wind, herds, and bees, with the rustle of trees, 
 
 Varied music prolong ; 
 On the spray as it swingeth, 
 Each bird sweetly singeth, 
 The sky-lark down flingeth 
 
 A torrent of song, — 
 Till the transports of music, devotion, and love, 
 Waft the rapturous soul to the regions above. 
 
 MUSICIANS — machines for producing sounds ; human 
 instruments, generally so completely absorbed by their own 
 art, that they are either ignorant of all others, or undervalue 
 them. In a "company at Vienna, where the conversation was 
 nearly engrossed by the praises of Goethe, Catalani ex- 
 claimed, with great naivete \ " Who is this Goethe ? — I have 
 never heard any of his music!" A poor German composer 
 being introduced to Mozart, whom he considered the greatest 
 man in the world, was so overcome with awe, that he dared 
 not lift his eyes from the ground, but remained, for some 
 time, stammering — " Ah, Imperial Majesty ! Ah, Imperial 
 Majesty!" In the same spirit Cafarielli, when told that 
 Farinelli had been made a sort of Prime Minister in Spain, 
 replied — " No man deserves it better, for his voice is abso- 
 lutely unrivalled." 
 
 MYSTERY. — To him who has been sated and dis- 
 appointed by the actual and the intelligible, there is a pro- 
 found charm in the unattainable and the inscrutable. Infants 
 stretch out their hands for the moon; children delight in 
 puzzles and riddles, even when they cannot discover their 
 solution; and the children of a larger growth desire no 
 better employment than to follow their example, however it 
 may lead them astray. The mystery of the Egyptian hiero- 
 glyphics was a frequent source of idolatry ; the type being 
 taken for the prototype, until leeks and onions received the 
 
252 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 homage originally meant for their divine Giver. The attrac- 
 tive mystery of Irving's unknown tongues has engendered a 
 fanaticism, at which we need the less wonder, if we remem- 
 ber the confession of the pious Baxter, that, in order to 
 awaken an interest in his congregation, he made it a rule, 
 in every sermon, to say something that was above their 
 capacity. 
 
 There is a glorious epoch of our existence, wherein the 
 comprehensible appears common and insipid, and in 
 abandoning ourselves to the enthusiasm of imagination, we 
 attain a middle state between despair and deification ; — a 
 beatific ecstacy, when the spirit longs to fly upward — when 
 the finite yearns for the infinite, the limited in intellect for 
 the omniscient, the helpless for the omnipotent, the real for 
 the impossible. Thus to flutter above the world, on the 
 extended wings of fancy, is to be half a deity. And yet the 
 forward-springing and ardent mind, which, running a-head 
 of its contemporaries, stands upon the forehead of the age to 
 come, only renders itself the more conspicuous mark for 
 obloquy and assault. Like a Shrovetide cock, tethered to the 
 earth, it can but partially raise itself, when it again sinks 
 down, amid the sticks and stones of its cruel persecutors. 
 
 AMES. — The character of different eras may, 
 to a certain extent, be discovered by the various 
 ways in which our ambitious nobility, and 
 others, have endeavoured to achieve an endur- 
 ing celebrity. When chivalry was the rage, 
 they gave their names to new inventions in arms and armour : 
 — now-a-days, they court notoriety by standing godfathers to 
 some new fashion in clothes and cookery, and eclipsing all 
 competitors in their coats, cabs, and castors. A ducal 
 Campbell, whose ancestors were always spilling hot blood, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 253 
 
 endeavours to win celebrity in another way, by inventing an 
 Argyle for preserving hot gravy; a Sandwich embalms his 
 name between two slices of bread and ham ; a Pembroke 
 immortalises himself in a table ; — a Skelmersdale goes down 
 to future ages, like an Egyptian divinity, in a chair ; — a 
 Standish, surpassing the bottle conjuror, creeps into an ink- 
 stand, by which means " he still keeps his memory BLACK 
 in our souls ;" — a Stanhope expects to be wheeled down to 
 posterity, by harnessing his name to a gig of a peculiar con- 
 struction ; — a Petersham, hitting upon the easiest device by 
 which he could prove to after ages that he wore a head, gives 
 his title to a hat. Another nobleman, clarum et venerabile 
 nomen, one who was said to have driven all the tailors into 
 the suburbs, by compelling them to live on the skirts of the 
 town, wraps up his name in the mummy-cloth of a Spencer, 
 and secures a long-enduring fame by inventing a short 
 coat. 
 
 It is not generally known, that names may be affected, 
 and even completely changed, by the state of the weather. 
 Such, however, is, unquestionably, the case. The late Mr. 
 Suet, the actor, going once to dine about twenty miles from 
 London, and being only able to get an outside place on the 
 coach, arrived in such a bedraggled state, from an incessant 
 rain, and so muffled up in great coats and pocket handker- 
 chiefs, that his friend inquired, doubtingly — "Are you Suet ?" 
 — " No !" replied the wag — " I'm dripping!" 
 
 Contracting a name sometimes lengthens the idea. Kean 
 mentions an actor of the name of Lancaster, whom his com- 
 rades called Lanky, for shortness. 
 
 NEGRO — a human being treated as a brute, because he 
 is black, by inhuman beings, and greater brutes, who hap- 
 pen to be white. The Ethiopians paint the devil white; and 
 they have much better reason for making him look like 
 
254 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 a European, than we have for giving him an African com- 
 plexion. 
 
 NOBLEMAN — one who is indebted to his ancestors for 
 a name and an estate, and sometimes to himself, for being 
 unworthy of both. It was said of an accomplished and ami- 
 able Earl, who was weak enough to be always boasting his 
 title and his birth — " What a pity he is a nobleman ; he 
 really deserves to have been born a commoner." 
 
 NON-RESIDENCE and PLURALITIES — the best 
 securities for an effectual Church Reform. " These scandal- 
 ous practices," says Bishop Burnet, "are sheltered among 
 us by many colours of law ; whereas the Church of Rome, 
 from whence we had these and many other abuses, has freed 
 herself from this under which we labour, to our great and 
 just reproach. This is so shameful a profanation of holy 
 things, that it ought to be treated with detestation and 
 horror. Do such men think on the vows they made at their 
 ordination, on the rules in the Scriptures, or on the nature of 
 their functions, or that it is a cure of souls ? How long, how 
 long shall this be the peculiar disgrace of our Church, which, 
 for aught I know, is the only Church in the world that tole- 
 rates it?" — Hist, of his own Ti?nes, p. 646. 
 
 When, by an official return to Parliament, the great extent 
 of these scandalous abuses was first made known to Lord 
 Harrowby, " it struck me," says he, " with surprise — I could 
 almost say with horror." Alas ! when temporal peers are 
 horror-struck by the scandals that are tolerated and practised 
 by their spiritual teachers ! 
 
 Many ecclesiastics, particularly from Ireland, whose influ- 
 ence or command of money has procured them a handsome 
 tithe income, and who are leading idle and luxurious lives, at 
 places of fashionable resort, either in England or upon the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 255 
 
 Continent, without ever dreaming of their flock, except as 
 to the best mode of fleecing them, boast, nevertheless, of 
 being staunch supporters of the Church. Verily, it must be 
 as its buttresses, rather than its pillars, since they are never 
 seen inside the sacred building. The Rev. Dr. England, 
 
 of H , as one of his parishioners very logically remarked, 
 
 is the only divine who has a valid excuse for non-residence, 
 and always employing curates, since we have the authority 
 of Lord Nelson for asserting, that " England expects every 
 man to do his duty." 
 
 It is related of Philip of Narni, that he once preached a 
 sermon upon non-residence, before Pope Gregory XV., which 
 had the effect of driving thirty Bishops to their respective 
 dioceses the day after. Alas ! we have few preachers and no 
 bishops of this stamp in Protestant England. 
 
 NONSENSE — sense that happens to differ from our own, 
 supposing that we have any. If matter and mind, blending 
 together in two incoherent substances, form the connecting 
 link that separates physics from metaphysics, the real from 
 the imaginary, and the visible from the unapparent, it follows 
 as a precursive corollary, that the learned comments of the 
 scholiasts, the dogmas of theologians, and the elaborate 
 treatises of the Byzantine historians, can never be recognized 
 as evidences of a foregone conclusion. Statistics and algebra, 
 as well as logic and analogy, equally rebut the inference that 
 in a case of so complicated a nature, the deposition of a mere 
 functionary can be received as the spontaneous evidence of 
 a compulsory principal. Cases may doubtless arise, where 
 legal deductions, drawn from federal rather than from feudal 
 institutes, will vary the superstructure upon which the whole 
 theory was based ; but in the present instance, such objec- 
 tions must be deemed rather captious than analytical. On 
 the whole it is presumed that the reader, who has carefully 
 
256 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 perused and reconsidered our arguments, will be at little loss 
 to understand the nature of the word, of which we have 
 written this clear and explanatory definition. Should he, 
 however, not be satisfied, he is referred to Voltaire's Galima- 
 thias, beginning " Unjour quHl ' faisoit mitt" &c. 
 
 NON SEQUITUR — a grammatical Adam, being a 
 relative without an ante-cedent : — something that is apropos 
 to nothing, and comes after without following from. Of this 
 figure there are various sorts ; but the most common form is 
 putting the cart before the horse, or taking the effect for the 
 cause. The industrious, prudent, and enlightened people of 
 this country have thriven and grown great and rich, not 
 always in consequence of good, but in spite of bad govern- 
 ment. Their native shrewdness and energy have enabled 
 them to triumph over impediments, political, fiscal, and com- 
 mercial, which would have completely crushed a less active 
 and enterprising nation. When, therefore, they are desired 
 to reverence the mis-governed and the unreformed institu- 
 tions, to which alone they are told to consider themselves 
 indebted for all the advantages they enjoy, one cannot help 
 recalling the non sequitur of the Carmelite Friar, who in- 
 stanced as a striking proof of the superintendence and good- 
 ness of Providence, that it almost invariably made a river 
 run completely through the middle of every large city. 
 Somewhat akin to this instance of naivete was the reply of 
 the Birmingham boy, who being asked whether some shillings, 
 which he tendered at a shop, were good, answered with 
 great simplicity, " Ay, that they be, for I seed father make 
 'em all this morning." 
 
 NOVELTY — what we recover from oblivion. We can 
 fish little out of the river Lethe that has not first been thrown 
 into it. The world of discovery goes round without advancing, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 257 
 
 like a squirrel in its cage, and the revolution of one cen- 
 tury differs but little from that of its predecessor. New 
 performers mount the stage, but the pieces and its accom- 
 paniments remain pretty much the same. Trumpets and 
 taxes are the characteristics of the present era. No se- 
 curity without immense standing armies, no armies with- 
 out pay, no pay without taxes. It is a grievance which we 
 cannot avoid, and of which, therefore, it were as well to 
 say nothing ; but if Tacitus is not silent on the subject, who 
 can be? " Neque quies gentium" says that historian, " sine 
 armisy neque anna sine stifiendiis, neque stifiendia sine tri- 
 butis haberi queunt." 
 
 In the two extremes of life we have the most acute sense 
 of novelty. To the boy all is new : to the old man, when 
 this world no longer offers variety or change, is presented the 
 most stimulating of all novelties — the contemplation of a new 
 existence. 
 
 Shakspeare " exhausted worlds, and then imagined new f 
 but this is a privilege conceded to none but the chosen sons 
 of genius. Common writers can only become original, when 
 they have exhausted nature, by becoming unnatural. Like a 
 mountebank at a fair, they surprise our attention by their 
 extravagance, but they cannot keep it. We shrug our 
 shoulders, and forget them. Many are the writers, never- 
 theless, who prefer a momentary fool's cap to a distant 
 laurel. 
 
 NOVEMBER — the period at which most Englishmen 
 take leave of the sun for nine months, and not a few of them 
 for ever. A demure Scottish lady having been introduced to 
 the Persian ambassador when in London, exclaimed with an 
 incredulous air, " Is it possible that ye are such idolators in 
 Persia as to worship the sun ? " " Yes, madam," was the 
 reply, " and so you would in England, if you ever saw him." 
 
258 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 f} ATH, Legal — making the awful and infinite 
 Deity a party to all the trivial and vulgar im- 
 pertinences of human life : an act of profanation 
 equally required from a churchwarden and an 
 archbishop, from a petty constable and the 
 chief justice of England. " Let the law," says Paley, " con- 
 tinue its own functions, if they be thought requisite ; but 
 let it spare the solemnity of an oath, and, where it is neces- 
 sary, from the want of something better to depend upon, to 
 accept a man's word or own account, let it annex to pre- 
 varication penalties proportionable to the public consequence 
 of the offence." 
 
 Where they are made a test of religious belief, for the 
 purpose of excluding any class of our fellow-subjects from 
 their civil rights, oaths, being equally opposed to Christi- 
 anity, policy, and justice, ought to be totally and finally 
 abolished. He who first devised the oath of abjuration, 
 profligately boasted that he had framed a test which should 
 " damn one half of the nation, and starve the other ;V- a 
 vaunt well worth the consideration of those who have placed 
 themselves within the first clause of his prophecy. 
 
 To the utterance of oaths, as execrations, a practice 
 equally hateful for its blasphemy and vulgarity, there seems 
 to be little other inducement than its gratuitous sinfulness, 
 since it communicates no pleasure, and removes no un- 
 easiness, neither elevates the speaker, nor depresses the 
 hearer. " Go," said Prince Henry, the son of James I., when 
 one of his courtiers swore bitterly at being disappointed of a 
 tennis match — " Go ! all the pleasures of earth are not worth 
 a single oath." 
 
 OBEDIENCE, Military — must be implicit and unreason- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 259 
 
 ing. " Sir," said the Duke of Wellington to an officer of 
 engineers, who urged the impossibility of executing the 
 directions he had received, " I did not ask your opinion, I 
 gave you my orders, and I expect them to be obeyed." It 
 might have been difficult, however, to yield a literal obe- 
 dience to the adjutant of a volunteer corps, who, being 
 doubtful whether he had distributed muskets to all the men, 
 cried out — " All you that are without arms will please to hold 
 up your hands." 
 
 ODOURS, Bad — the silent voice of nature, made audible 
 by the nose. The worst may, in some degree, be sweetened 
 to our sense, by a recollection of the important part they 
 perform in the economy of the world. Those emitted by 
 dead animals attract birds and beasts of prey from an 
 almost incredible distance, who not only soon remove the 
 nuisance, but convert it into new life, beauty, and enjoy- 
 ment. Should no such resource be at hand, as is often 
 the case in inhabited countries, the pernicious effluvia dis- 
 engaged from these decaying substances, occasion them to 
 be quickly buried in the ground, where their organised 
 forms are resolved into chemical constituents, and they are 
 fitted to become the food of vegetables. The noxious gas 
 is converted into the aroma of the flower, and that which 
 threatened to poison the air, affords nourishment and de- 
 light to man and beast. Animals are thus converted into 
 plants, and plants again become animals ; — change of form 
 and not extinction — or, rather, destruction for the sake of 
 reproduction, being the system of nature. Pulverised human 
 bones are now largely imported into England for manure, 
 and the corn thus raised will again be eventually recon- 
 verted into human bones. 
 
 OLD AGE— need not necessarily be felt in the mind, as 
 
 s 2 
 
2 6o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 in the body ; time's current may wear wrinkles in the face 
 that shall not reach the heart : there is no inevitable de- 
 crepitude or senility of the spirit, when its tegument feels 
 the touches of decay. We sometimes talk of men falling 
 into their second childhood, when we should rather say that 
 they have never emerged from their first, but have always 
 been in an intellectual nonage. Vigorous minds very rarely 
 sink into imbecility, even in extreme age. Time seems 
 rather to drag them backwards, to their youth, than forwards 
 towards senility. Like the Glastonbury thorn, they flower in 
 the Christmas of their days. Hear how beautifully the vener- 
 able Goethe, in the Dedication to the first part of Faust, 
 abandons himself to this Palingenesia. 
 
 " Ye approach again, ye shadowy shapes, which once, in 
 the morning of life, presented yourselves to my troubled 
 view ! Shall I try, this time, to hold you fast ? Do I feel 
 my heart still inclined towards that delusion ? Ye press 
 forward ! well then, ye may hold dominion over me as ye 
 arise around out of vapour and mist. My bosom feels 
 youthfully agitated by the magic breath which atmospheres 
 your train. 
 
 " Ye bring with you the images of happy days, and many 
 loved shades arise ; like to an old, half-expired tradition, 
 rises First-love with Friendship in their company. The pang 
 is renewed ; the plaint repeats the labyrinthine, mazy course 
 of life, and names the dear ones who, cheated of fair hours 
 by fortune, have vanished away before me. 
 
 " They hear not the following lays — the souls to whom 
 I sang the first. Dispersed is the friendly throng — the first 
 echo, alas, has died away ! My sorrow voices itself to the 
 stranger many : their very applause makes my heart sick ; 
 and all that in other days rejoiced in my song — if still living, 
 strays scattered through the world. 
 
 "And a yearning, long unfelt, for that quiet, pensive, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 261 
 
 Spirit-realm seizes me. 'Tis hovering even now, in half- 
 formed tones, my lisping lay, like the ^Eolian harp. A 
 tremor seizes me : tear follows tear ; the austere heart feels 
 itself growing mild and soft. What I have, I see as in the 
 distance ; and what is gone, becomes a reality to me." 
 
 What a cordial is this apocalypse of youth to all " grave 
 and reverend seniors !" — Why should any of us doubt 
 that the mind may be progressive, even when the body 
 loses ground ? If we are wiser to-day than yesterday, what 
 is to prevent our being wiser to-morrow than to-day ? — 
 Women rarely die during pregnancy ; and while the mind 
 can be made to conceive and bear children, we may be 
 assured that nature means to preserve its full vitality and 
 power. 
 
 Privation of friends by death, is the greatest trial of old 
 age ; for, though new ones may succeed to their places, they 
 cannot replace them. For this, however, as for all other 
 sorrows, there is a consolation. When we are left behind, 
 and feel as exiles upon earth, we are reconciled to the 
 idea of quitting it, and yearn for that future home, where 
 we shall be united to our predecessors, and whither our 
 survivors will follow us. 
 
 Old age is still comparative, and one man may be 
 younger at eighty, than another at forty. " Ah ! madam ! " 
 exclaimed the patriarch Fontenelle, when talking to a young 
 and beautiful woman — " if I were but fourscore again ! " 
 
 How powerful is sympathy ! The mere mention of this 
 anecdote has sent me courting to the muse, and ha, 
 thrown into verse what I had intended further to say on 
 the subject of 
 
 OLD AGE. 
 
 Yes, I am old ; — my strength declines, 
 And wrinkles tell the touch of time, 
 
26a THE UN TRUMPET; 
 
 Yet might I fancy these the signs 
 
 Not of decay, but manhood's prime ; 
 For all within is young and glowing, 
 Spite of old age's outward showing. 
 
 Yes, I am old ; — the ball, the song, 
 The turf, the gun, no more allure ; 
 
 I shun the gay and gilded throng ; 
 Yet, ah ! how far more sweet and pure 
 
 Home's tranquil joys, and mental treasures, 
 
 Than dissipation's proudest pleasures ! 
 
 Yes, I am old ; — Ambition's call, — 
 
 Fame, wealth, distinction's keen pursuit 
 
 That once could charm and cheat me — all 
 Are now detected, passive, mute. 
 
 Thank God ! the passions and their riol 
 
 Are barter'd for content and quiet. 
 
 Yes, I am old ; — but as I press 
 The vale of years with willing feet, 
 
 Still do 1 find life's sorrows less, 
 
 And all its hallow'd joys more sweet ; 
 
 Since Time, for every rose he snatches, 
 
 Takes fifty thorns, with all their scratches. 
 
 My wife — God bless her ! is as dear 
 As when I plighted first my truth ; 
 
 I feel, in every child's career, 
 The joys of renovated youth : 
 
 And as to Nature — I behold hei 
 
 With fresh delight as I grow older. 
 
 Yes, I am old ; — and death hath ta'en 
 Full many a friend, to memory dear ; 
 
 Yet, when I die, 'twill soothe the pain 
 Of quitting my survivors here, 
 
 To think how all will be delighted, 
 
 When in the skies again united ! 
 
 Yes, I am old ; — experience now, 
 
 That best of guides, hath made me sage, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 263 
 
 And thus instructed, I avow 
 
 My firm conviction, that old age, 
 Of all our various terms of living, 
 Deserves the warmest, best thanksgiving ! 
 
 "OLD MEN"— says Rochefoucauld, "like to give good 
 advice, as a consolation for being no longer in a con- 
 dition to give a bad example." May we not turn the dictum 
 of the writer against himself, and infer that he gave us 
 all his bad advice from a contrary feeling? — Well may 
 the portrait be dark, when the misanthrope draws from 
 himself ! 
 
 OMEN — the imaginary language of heaven speaking by 
 signs. An oracle is the same, speaking by human tongues, 
 but both have now become dumb. If we wish to know who 
 believes in this Latin word, we must get our Latin answer by 
 reading it backwards. 
 
 OPINION — a capricious tyrant, to which, many a free- 
 born Briton willingly binds himself a slave. Deeming it of 
 much more importance to be valued than valuable; — 
 holding opinion to be worthier than worth, we had rather 
 stand well in the estimation of others, even of those whom 
 we do not esteem, than of ourselves. This is, indeed, the 
 
 " Meanness that soars, and pride that licks the dust." 
 
 The greater the importance we attach to our opinions, the 
 greater our intolerance, which is wrong, even when we are right, 
 and doubly so when we are in error ; so that persecution for 
 opinion's sake, can never be justifiable. Our own experience 
 might teach us better, for every man has differed, at various 
 times, from himself, as much as he ever has differed at any 
 one time from others. 
 
264 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Suffering others to think for us, when Heaven has supplied 
 us with reason and a conscience for the express purpose of 
 enabling us to think for ourselves, is the great fountain of all 
 human error. "There cannot," says Locke, "be a more 
 dangerous thing to rely on than the opinion of others, nor 
 more likely to mislead one ; since there is much more false- 
 hood and error among men than truth and knowledge ; and if 
 the opinions and persuasions of others, whom we know and 
 think well of, be a ground of assent, men have reason to be 
 heathens in Japan, Mahometans in Turkey, Papists in 
 Spain, Protestants in England, and Lutherans in Sweden." * 
 
 Were a whole nation to start upon a new career of educa- 
 tion, with mature faculties, and minds free from preposses- 
 sions or prejudices, how much would be quickly abandoned 
 that is now most stubbornly cherished ! If we have many 
 opinions, in our present state, that have once been pro- 
 scribed, it is presumable that we cling to many more which 
 future generations will discard. The world is yet in its boy- 
 hood — perhaps in its infancy ; and our fancied wisdom is but 
 the babble of the nursery. However quickly we may take 
 up an error, we abandon it slowly. As a man often feels a 
 pain in the leg that has been long amputated, so does he fre- 
 quently yearn towards an opinion after it has been cut off 
 from his mind, — so true is it that 
 
 " He that's convinced against his will, 
 Is of the same opinion still." 
 
 So wedded are some people to their own notions, that they 
 will not have any persons for friends, or even for servants, 
 
 who do not entertain similar views. Lord L makes a 
 
 point of strictly cross-questioning his domestics, as to their 
 religious and political faith, before he engages them. While 
 
 * On the Human Understanding, 1. iv. c. xv. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 265 
 
 residing on his Irish estates, a groom presented himself to be 
 hired, resolving, beforehand, not to compromise himself by 
 any inconsiderate replies. — " What are your opinions ?" was 
 the peer's first demand. — " Indeed, then, your lordship's 
 honour ! I have just none at all at all." — " Not any ! non- 
 sense ! — you must have some, and I insist upon knowing 
 them." — " Why, then, your honour's glory, they are for all 
 the world just the same as your lordship's." — " Then you can 
 have no objection to state them, and to confess frankly what 
 is your way of thinking." — " Och ! and is it my way of think- 
 ing you mane by my opinions ? — Why, then, I am exactly the 
 same way of thinking as Pat Sullivan, your honour's game- 
 keeper, for, says he to me, as I was coming up stairs, 
 Murphy, says he, I'm thinking you'll never be paying me the 
 two-and-twenty shillings I lent you, last Christmas was a 
 twelvemonth. — Faith ! says I, Pat Sullivan ! I'm quite of 
 your way of thinking." 
 
 OPTIMISM — a devout conviction that, under the govern- 
 ment of a benevolent and all-powerful God, everything con- 
 duces ultimately to the best in the world he has created, and 
 that mankind, the constant objects of his paternal care, are 
 in a perpetual state of improvement, and increased happi- 
 ness. This is a great and consoling principle, the summary 
 of all religion and all philosophy, the reconciler of all mis- 
 givings, the source of all comfort and consolation. To 
 believe in it, is to realize its truth, so far as we are individu- 
 ally concerned; and indeed it will mainly depend upon 
 ourselves, whether or not everything shall be for the best. 
 Let us cling to the moral of Parnell's hermit, rather than 
 suffer our confidence in the divine goodness to be staggered 
 by the farcical exaggerations of Voltaire's Candide. If the 
 theory of the former be a delusion, it is, at least, a delightful 
 one; and, for my own part — " malim cum Platone errare, 
 
a66 THE TIN TRUMPET;' 
 
 quam cum aliis recte s entire" — where the error is of so con- 
 solatory and elevating a description. 
 
 An optimist may be wrong, but presumption and religion 
 are in his favour ; nor can we positively pronounce anything 
 to be for final evil, until the end of all things has arrived, 
 and the whole scheme of creation is revealed to us. "Does 
 not every architect complain of the injustice of criticising a 
 building before it is half finished ? — Yet, who can tell what 
 volume of the creation we are in at present, or what point 
 the structure of our moral fabric has attained ? — Whilst we 
 are all in a vessel that is sailing under sealed orders, we 
 shall do well to confide implicitly in our government and 
 Captain."* 
 
 ORIGINALITY — unconscious or undetected imitation. 
 Even Seneca complains, that the ancients had compelled 
 him to borrow from them what they would have taken from 
 him, had he been lucky enough to have preceded them. 
 " Every one of my writings," says Goethe, in the same can- 
 did spirit, " has been furnished to me by a thousand different 
 persons, a thousand different things: the learned and the 
 ignorant, the wise and the foolish, infancy and age, have 
 come in turn, generally without having the least suspicion of 
 it, to bring me the offering of their thoughts, their faculties, 
 their experience : often have they sowed the harvest I have 
 reaped. My work is that of an aggregation of human beings, 
 taken from the whole of nature; it bears the name of 
 Goethe." 
 
 It is in the power of any writer to be original, by deserting 
 nature, and seeking the quaint and the fantastical; but 
 literary monsters, like all others, are generally short-lived. 
 "When I was a young man," says Goldsmith, "being anxious 
 
 * Ed. Review, 1. 309. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 267 
 
 to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new proposi- 
 tions ; but I soon gave this over, for I found that generally 
 what was new was false." Strictly speaking, we may be 
 original without being new : our thoughts may be our own, 
 and yet common-place. 
 
 ORTHODOXY — says a reverend writer, will cover a 
 multitude of sins, but a cloud of virtues cannot cover the 
 want of the minutest particle of orthodoxy :— whatever you 
 do, be orthodox. Nevertheless, it might be easily shown, 
 that all Christian Churches have suffered more by their zeal 
 for orthodoxy, and by the violent methods taken to promote 
 it, than from the utmost efforts of their greatest enemies. 
 
 S " and Qs. — The origin of the phrase " Mind 
 your Ps and Qs," is not generally known. In 
 alehouses, where chalk scores were formerly 
 marked upon the wall, or behind the door of the 
 tap-room, it was customary to put these initial 
 letters at the head of every man's account, to show the 
 number of pints and quarts for which he was in arrears ; and 
 we may presume many a friendly rustic to have tapped his 
 neighbour on the shoulder, when he was indulging too freely 
 in his potations, and to have exclaimed, as he pointed to the 
 score — " Giles ! Giles ! mind your Ps and Qs." 
 
 When Toby, the learned pig, was in the zenith of his 
 popularity, a theatrical wag, who attended the performance, 
 maliciously set before him some peas; a temptation which 
 the animal could not resist, and which immediately occa- 
 sioned him to lose his cue. The pig exhibiter remonstrated 
 with the author of the mischief on the unfairness of what he 
 had done, when he replied, that his only wish was, to see 
 whether Toby knew his Ps from his Qs. 
 
268 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 PANACEA, Advertised — see Poison. There would be 
 little comfort for the sick, either in body or mind, were there 
 any truth in the averment, that philosophy, like medicine, 
 has plenty of drugs and quack medicines, but few remedies, 
 and hardly any specifics. So far from admitting this dis- 
 couraging statement, a panacea may be prescribed, which, 
 under ordinary circumstances, will generally prevent, and 
 rarely fail to alleviate, most of the evils that flesh is heir to. 
 The following are the simple ingredients: — occupation for 
 the mind, exercise for the body, temperance and virtue for 
 the sake of both. This is the magnum arcanicm of health 
 and happiness. Half of our illness and misery arises from 
 the perversion of that reason which was given to us as a pro- 
 tection against both. We are led astray by our guide, and 
 poisoned by our physician. 
 
 PARENT. — It may be doubted, whether a man can fully 
 appreciate the mysterious properties, and the thought-ele- 
 vating dignity of his nature, until, by becoming a parent, he 
 feels himself to be a creator as well as a creature. The 
 childless man passes through life like an arrow through the 
 air, leaving nothing behind that may mark his flight. A 
 tombstone, stating that they were born and died, is the sole 
 brief evidence of existence which the mass of bachelors can 
 transmit to the succeeding generation. But the father feels 
 that he belongs to the future, as well as the present ; he has, 
 perhaps, become a permanent part and parcel of this majes- 
 tical world " till the great globe dissolve ;" for his descendants 
 may not impossibly make discoveries, or effect reforms, that 
 shall influence the destiny of the whole human race, and 
 thus immortalise their name. These may be baseless dreams, 
 fond and doting reveries, but, like all the aspirations con- 
 nected with our offspring, they serve to soothe and meliorate 
 the heart, while they send the delighted spirit into the future, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 269 
 
 wreathed with laurels, and mounted upon a triumphal car of 
 glorious hopes. 
 
 PARTRIDGE— a bird to which the Squirearchy are so 
 strangely attached, that they will shoot, trap, and transport 
 their fellow-creatures for the pleasure of destroying it them- 
 selves. 
 
 PARTY-SPIRIT— a species of mental vitriol, which we 
 bottle up in our bosoms, that we may squirt it against others ; 
 but which, in the meantime, irritates, corrodes, and poisons 
 our own hearts. Personality and invective are not only proofs 
 of a bad argument, but of a bad arguer; for politeness is 
 perfectly compatible with wit and logic, while it enhances the 
 triumph of both. By a union of courtesy and talent, an 
 adversary may be made to grace his own defeat, as the san- 
 dal tree perfumes the hatchet that cuts it down. Caesar's 
 soldiers fought none the worse for being scented with un- 
 guents, nor will any combatant be weakened by moral 
 suavity. The bitterness of political pamphlets, and news- 
 paper writing, so far from acting as a tonic, debilitates and 
 dishonours them. A furious pamphleteer, on being re- 
 proached with his unsparing acrimony, exclaimed, " Burke, 
 and Curran, and Grattan, have written thus, as well as I." — 
 " Ay," said his friend, " but have you written thus as well as 
 they?" Political writers and orators must not mistake the 
 rage, the mouthing, and the contortions of the Sybil for her 
 inspiration. 
 
 PASSIONS.— Were it not for the salutary agitation of the 
 passions, the waters of life would become dull, stagnant, and 
 as unfit for all vital purposes as those of the Dead Sea. It 
 should be equally our object to guard against those tempests 
 and overflowings which may entail mischief, either upon our- 
 
2 7 o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 selves or others ; and to avoid that drowsy calm, of which 
 the sluggishness and inertia are inevitably hostile to the 
 health and spirits. In the voyage of life, we should imitate 
 the ancient mariners, who, without losing sight of the earth, 
 trusted to the heavenly signs for their guidance. Happy the 
 man, the tide of whose passions, like that of the great ocean, 
 is regulated by a light from above ! 
 
 St. Evremond compares the passions to runaway horses, 
 which you must tame by letting them have their run; a 
 perilous experiment, in which the rider may break his neck. 
 Much better to restrain and conquer them before they get 
 head; for if they do not obey, they will be sure to command, 
 you. 
 
 PASSIVE RESISTANCE— succeeding to that doctrine 
 of passive obedience, which was once so strenuously incul- 
 cated, promises to be not less efficient as a public weapon, 
 than the helplessness of woman is often found to be in private 
 life. This formidable, though negative power, may be com- 
 pared to a snowball, — the more you push against it, the 
 greater it becomes ; it continues giving way before you, until 
 it finally comes to a stand still, conquers your strength, and 
 defies your utmost efforts to move it. The Quakers were the 
 first to discover this important secret ; — the Catholic tithe- 
 payers of Ireland are now acting upon it ; — the English dis- 
 senters are betaking themselves to it in the question of 
 Church-rates ; — and it threatens to be the common resort of 
 the whole people, wherever there is a grievance to be re- 
 dressed, for which they are compelled to take the remedy 
 into their own hands. 
 
 PATRIOTISM— too often the hatred of other countries 
 disguised as the love of our own; a fanaticism injurious to the 
 character, and fatal to the repose of mankind. In the sub* 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 27* 
 
 jects of small states, it is more especially odious, for they 
 must hate nearly the whole of their fellow-creatures. Were 
 the world under the domination of one monarch, patriotism 
 would be a virtue. Let us view it as under the government 
 of one celestial king; let us consider the children of our 
 common Father, whatever be their creed or country, as our 
 brethren, and the narrow feeling of patriotism will soon 
 expand into the nobler and more exalted principle of an all- 
 embracing humanism. Most delightful is it to contemplate 
 the friendly intercourse now in active operation between the 
 people of different countries, and more especially between 
 those of France and England. There is rapidly springing 
 up a holy alliance of nations, not of kings, and a European 
 public opinion, from which the philanthropist may confidently 
 anticipate the controlling of governments, the diminished 
 frequency of wars, the improvement of the human race, and 
 the completion of what a benevolent Providence has designed 
 for the destiny of man. 
 
 Public opinion, when it has once ascertained its own 
 power, will direct, while it seems to obey; as a vessel, while 
 it appears to be governed by the elements, is, in fact, com- 
 pelling them to conduct her into the desired port. 
 
 PEN — the silent mouthpiece of the mind, which gives 
 ubiquity and permanence to the evanescent thought of a 
 moment. 
 
 PERSECUTION— disobeying the most solemn injunc- 
 tions of Christianity, under the sham plea of upholding it, 
 How admirable the humility of the spiritual persecutor, when 
 he kindly condescends to patronise the Deity, to assist 
 Omniscience with his counsels, and lend a helping hand to 
 Omnipotence ! In such an attempt, the failure is generally 
 as signal as the folly, the cruelty, and the impiety; for 
 
272 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 martyrs, like certain plants, spring up more stubbornly, the 
 more you endeavour to crush and trample them down. The 
 rebound is always proportioned to the percussion, the recoil 
 to the discharge. To conquer fanaticism, you must tolerate 
 it : the shuttlecock of religious difference soon falls to the 
 ground, when there are no battledores to beat it backwards 
 and forwards. 
 
 Power should never be given to any class, as religionists ; 
 for morality, and even humanity, are but sorry securities 
 against the promptings of that heartless monster, bigotry. 
 Hence the danger of what is called an established religion, 
 or, in other words, of a religion wielding the sword of the 
 civil magistrate — the source of persecution in all creeds, and 
 all ages. " It was the State religion of Rome that persecuted 
 the first Christians." — "Who was it that crucified the Saviour 
 of the world for attempting to reform the religion of his 
 country ? The Jewish priesthood. — Who was it that drowned 
 the altars of their idols with the blood of Christians, for 
 attempting to abolish Paganism ? The Pagan priesthood.— 
 Who was it that persecuted to flames and death those who, 
 in the time of Wickliffe and his followers, laboured to reform 
 the errors of Popery ? The Popish priesthood. — Who was it, 
 and who is it, that both in England and in Ireland, since the 
 Reformation — but I check my hand, being unwilling to reflect 
 upon the dead, or to exasperate the living."* 
 
 " It was the State religion in this country that persecuted 
 the Protestants; and since Protestantism has been estab- 
 lished, it is the State religion which has persecuted Protes- 
 tant dissenters. Is this the fault principally of the faith of 
 these Churches, or of their alliance with the State ? No man 
 can be in doubt for an answer."f 
 
 The clergy, indeed, are apt to tell us, that they require no 
 
 * Miscellaneous Tracts, by the Bishop of Llandaff, vol. ii. 
 f Dymond's " Church and the Clergy." 
 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 2-3 
 
 further favour for their doctrines and discipline, than a fair 
 and impartial inquiry ; and this is perfectly true, so long as 
 they are satisfied with the results of the inquiry; but should 
 the contrary be the case, the luckless investigator is liable to 
 be refuted by the Canon Law, and the irresistible arguments 
 of fine, pillory, and imprisonment. This is freedom of inquiry 
 with a vengeance ! 
 
 PESSIMISTS — moral squinters, who, being incapable of 
 a straightforward view, " imagine that penetration is evinced 
 by universal suspicion and mistrust ; who hope, perhaps, to 
 exalt themselves by degrading others ; who discredit every 
 thing that is noble, believe all that is base; who would per- 
 suade their hearers, that the pure wholesome temple of moral 
 beauty and virtue, is a lazar-house of noisome corruption and 
 festering abomination. A more false and pestilent treason 
 against human nature, a more impious profanation of the 
 divinity of goodness that is within us, a more self-condemn- 
 ing calumny upon the world, it is not easy to conceive ; and 
 yet, upon this paltry, mischievous basis, have weak-headed 
 and bad-hearted men, in all ages, not only contrived to 
 obtain a reputation for shrewdness and sagacity, but some- 
 times have been enabled to distress, with painful misgivings, 
 those nobler spirits, who would wish to sympathise with 
 fellow-creatures, in the fulness of love and charity, and to 
 believe themselves surrounded with congenial hearts and 
 kindred souls." 
 
 PHILANTHROPY— was not ill-defined by Cicero, when 
 he says, alluding to the purposes of man's creation — " Ad 
 tuendos conservandosque homines ■, hominem natum esse. 
 Homines hominum causd sunt generati, ut ifisi inter se alii 
 aliis prodesse possint. Hominem, natures obedientem, 
 homini nocere non posse." 
 
 T 
 
274 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Why was man made with wide-spreading arms, except, as 
 Dryden beautifully supposes — 
 
 " To satisfy a wide embrace ?" 
 
 The only way we can evince our gratitude to our great 
 Creator and Benefactor, for all that he has given us, is to be 
 as useful as we can to his creatures, and " to love our neigh- 
 bour as ourselves. ;; 
 
 " I fear," said a country curate to his flock — " when I ex- 
 plained to you in my last charity sermon, that Philanthropy 
 was the love of our species, you must have understood me 
 to say specie, which may account for the smallness of the 
 collection. You will prove, I hope, by your present con- 
 tributions, that you are no longer labouring under the same 
 mistake." 
 
 PHYSICIANS — always cherish a sneaking kindness for 
 cooks, as more certain and regular purveyors of patients 
 than plague and pestilence; and there is this advantage 
 in their advice, that no two of them agree, so that the taste 
 of an invalid may always be accommodated. " Are you 
 out of sorts," says Montaigne, "that your physician has 
 denied ycu the enjoyment of wine, and of your favourite 
 dishes? — Be not uneasy; apply to me, and I engage to 
 find you one of equal credit, who shall put you under 
 a regimen perfectly opposite to that settled by your own 
 adviser." 
 
 Blunt, and even rude, as he sometimes was, our country- 
 man, Abernethy, would not have hazarded so unfeeling a 
 speech as is recorded of Andrea Baccio, the celebrated 
 Florentine physician. Being called on to attend a woman 
 of quality, he felt her pulse, and asked her how old she 
 was. — She told him, " about four score." — " And how 
 long would you live ? " demanded the surly practitioner, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 275 
 
 quitting her hand, and making the best of his way out of 
 the house. 
 
 Physicians may well smile at the many jokes and malicious 
 pleasantries of which they are the butt, for they must share 
 the consciousness of their patients, that there is no greater 
 benefactor to his species than the successful practitioner. 
 No wonder that such men received divine honours in the 
 olden times, since they seem to approximate to the attributes 
 of the gods — " ' Neque enim ulla, alia re homines propius ad 
 Deos accedunt, quam salutem hominibus dando." 
 
 PHYSIOGNOMY— reading the hand-writing of nature 
 upon the human countenance. If a man's face, as it is pre- 
 tended, be like that of a watch, which reveals without, what 
 it conceals within, silence itself is no security for our thoughts, 
 for a dial tells the hour as well as a clock. If, in addition to 
 this self-betrayal, the suggestion of Momus could be realized, 
 and a window be placed in our bosoms, so that "he who runs 
 may read," the best of us might well change colour, for many 
 a heart would look black when it was read. 
 
 PIC-NIC — the most unpleasant of all parties of pleasure. 
 
 If sick of home and luxuries, 
 
 You want a new sensation, 
 And sigh for the unwonted ease 
 
 Of ^accommodation, — 
 If you would taste, as amateur, 
 
 And vagabond beginner, 
 The painful pleasures of the poor, 
 
 Get up a Pic-nic dinner. 
 
 Presto! 'tis done— away you start, 
 
 All frolic, fun, and laughter, 
 The servants and provision cart 
 
 As gaily trotting after. 
 
 T 2 
 
2 7 6 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 The spot is reach'd, when all exclaim 
 
 With many a joyous antic, 
 " How sweet a scene !— I'm glad we came I 
 
 How rural — how romantic ! " 
 
 Pity the night was wet ! — but what 
 
 Care gipsies and carousers ? 
 So down upon the swamp you squat 
 
 In porous Nankeen trowsers. — 
 Stick to what sticks to you — your seat, 
 
 For thistles round you huddle, 
 While nettles threaten legs and feet, 
 
 If shifted from a puddle. 
 
 Half starved with hunger — parch'd with thirst, 
 
 All haste to spread the dishes, 
 When lo ! 'tis found, the ale has burst, 
 
 Amid the loaves and fishes. 
 Over the pie, a sodden sop, 
 
 The grasshoppers are skipping, 
 Each roll's a sponge, each loaf a mop, 
 
 And all the meat is dripping. — 
 
 Bristling with broken glass, you find 
 
 Some cakes among the bottles, 
 Which those may eat who do not mind 
 
 Excoriated throttles. 
 The biscuits now are wiped and dried, 
 
 When squalling voices utter, 
 ' ' Look I look ! a toad has got astride 
 
 Our only pat of butter ! " 
 
 Your solids in a liquid state, 
 
 Your cooling liquids heated, 
 And every promised joy by fate 
 
 Most fatally defeated ; 
 All, save the serving men are sour'd, 
 
 They smirk, the cunning sinners ! 
 Having, before they came, devoured 
 
 Most comfortable dinners. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 477 
 
 Still you assume, in very spite, 
 
 A grim and gloomy gladness, 
 Pretend to laugh— affect delight — 
 
 And scorn all show of sadness.— 
 While thus you smile, but storm within, 
 
 A storm without comes faster, 
 And down descends in deaf 'ning din 
 
 A ■ deluge of disaster. 
 
 'Tis sauve qui p tut; — the fruit dessert 
 
 Is fruitlessly deserted, 
 And homeward now you all revert, 
 
 Dull, desolate, and dirtied, 
 Each gruffly grumbling, as he eyes 
 
 His soaked and sullen brother, 
 " If these are Pic-nic pleasantries, 
 
 Preserve me from another ! " 
 
 « PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."— The hero of this popular 
 and pious allegory, as has been justly observed by Mr. 
 Dunlop, in his " History of Fiction," — " is a mere negative 
 character, without one good quality to recommend him. 
 There is little or no display of charity, beneficence, or even 
 benevolence, during the whole course of his pilgrimage. The 
 sentiments' of Christian are narrow and illiberal, and his 
 struggles and exertions wholly selfish." 
 
 In proof of the latter part of this imputation, mark with 
 what a heartless indifference to everything but himself, 
 he abandons his wife and family. — " Now he had not run 
 far from his own home, but his wife and children, perceiving 
 it, began to cry after him to return, but the man put two 
 fingers into his ears, and ran on, crying Life ! Life ! Eternal 
 Life ! So he looked not behind him, but fled towards the 
 middle of the plain." 
 
 So uniform are the results of fanaticism, even when en- 
 gendered by different views of religion, that a precisely 
 similar trait is related of the Catholic, St. Francis Xavier. 
 
a 7 8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 " It is well ," says Sir Walter Scott, speaking of his general 
 character, as given by Dryden, " that our admiration is 
 qualified by narrations so shocking to humanity, as the 
 account of the Saint passing by the house of his ancestors, 
 the abode of his aged mother, on his road to leave Europe 
 for ever, and conceiving he did God good service in 
 denying himself the melancholy consolation of a last fare- 
 well." — Life of Dryden, p. 338, 
 
 PLAGIARISTS— purloiners, who filch the fruit that others 
 have gathered, and then throw away the basket. 
 
 PLEASING ALL PARTIES. — This hopeless attempt 
 usually ends by pleasing none, for timeservers neither serve 
 themselves nor any one else. As the endeavour involves 
 a contemptible compromise of principle, it is generally 
 despised by the very parties whom we seek to conciliate. 
 What opinion can we have of a man who has no opinion 
 of his own ? — A neutral, we can understand and respect ; 
 but a Janus-faced double-dealer, who affects to belong to 
 both sides, will not be tolerated by either. His fear of 
 giving offence is the greatest of all offences. Of this, a 
 ludicrous instance was afforded at the time of the riots, in 
 1780, when every one was obliged to chalk "No Popery" 
 upon the wall of his house, in order to protect it from 
 violence. — Delpini, the clown, particularly anxious to win 
 " golden opinions from all sorts of men," since his benefit 
 was close at hand, scrawled upon his house, in large letters 
 — " No Religion." 
 
 PLEASURES — see Will-o'-the-wisp. Some, like the 
 horizon, recede perpetually as we advance towards them ; 
 others, like butterflies, are crushed by being caught. Plea- 
 sure unattained, is the hare which we hold in chase, cheered 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 279 
 
 on by the ardour of competition, the exhilarating cry of 
 the dogs — the shouts of the hunters^-the echo of the horn — 
 the ambition of being in at the death. Pleasure attained, is 
 the same hare hanging up in the sportman's larder, worth- 
 less, disregarded, despised, dead. 
 
 The keenest pleasures of an unlawful nature are poisoned 
 by a lurking self-reproach, ever rising up to hiss at us, like a 
 snake amid the flowers — 
 
 " medio de fonte leporum, 
 
 Surgit aliquid amari ;" 
 
 while there is a secret consolation, even in the heaviest 
 calamity, if we feel that it has not been incurred by our 
 own misconduct. Upon this subject the great and golden 
 rule is, so to enjoy present, as that they may not interfere 
 with future pleasures. Burns has happily compared sensual 
 pleasure to 
 
 " Snow that falls upon a river, 
 A moment white, then gone for ever." 
 
 POETRY — the music of thought conveyed to us in the 
 music of language: — the art of embalming intellectual 
 beauty, a process which threatens to be speedily enrolled, 
 together with the Egyptian method of immortalising the body, 
 among the sciences which are lost. 
 
 The harmony of the works of nature is the visible poetry 
 of the Almighty, emblazoned on the three-leaved book of 
 earth, sea, and sky. 
 
 If Hayley could talk, even in his days, of — "the cold 
 blank bookseller's rhyme-freezing face," what would he say 
 in ours, when we have seen Crabbe, Wordsworth, and 
 Coleridge, condemned to an involuntary silence ; Moore, 
 the first lyrical writer of the age, " vir nulla non donandus 
 laurft" one whose very soul is poetry, driven to the ungenial 
 
2 8o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 toil of Biography; and Southey, not only necessitated to 
 waste his fine poetical talents and kindly feelings in the 
 fierce arena of criticism and politics, but absolutely obliged 
 to consult the public taste, or rather the total want of it, by 
 discontinuing the Laureate odes ? 
 
 Absurd as it was to expect a rational answer from T. H., 
 I ventured to ask him how it came that all our best poets 
 were obliged to write prose ? — " Because poetry is prose- 
 scribed? was his reply. 
 
 POINT, One good. — So various are the estimates formed 
 of us by our fellow-creatures, that there never, perhaps, 
 existed an individual, however unpraiseworthy, who was 
 not acknowledged to have one good point in his character, 
 though it by no means follows, that this admission is always 
 to be taken as a compliment. A gentleman, travelling on a 
 Sunday, was obliged to stop, in order to replace one of his 
 horse's shoes. The farrier was at church ; but a villager 
 suggested, that if he went on to Jem Harrison's forge, he 
 would probably be found at home. This proved to be true, 
 when the rustic who had led the horse to the spot exclaimed 
 — " Well, I must say that for Jem — for it is the only good 
 point about him — he do never go to Church ! " 
 
 POLITENESS — of the person exhibits itself in elegance 
 of manners, and a strict adherence to the conventional 
 forms and courtesies of polished life. Politeness of the 
 heart consists in an habitual benevolence, and an absence 
 of selfishness in our intercourse with society of all classes. 
 Each of these may exist without the other. 
 
 POOR LAWS* — premiums upon idleness and improvi- 
 
 * How far the author mi<jht have modified this article, had he lived 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 281 
 
 dence — reversing the moralising effect of the prudential 
 restraints, and of the domestic affections, as devised for 
 the welfare of society by the wisdom of God, through the 
 instrumentality of a demoralising system, invented by the 
 folly of man. Our poor laws, making the industrious sup- 
 port the indolent, the moral the profligate, and the prudent 
 the improvident, are not only dissuasions from good, but 
 stimulants to evil, by encouraging selfishness, reckless- 
 ness, and inconsiderate marriages, and thus perpetuating 
 pauperism, misery, and vice. This mischievous system 
 tends inevitably to impoverish the rich, without enriching 
 the poor; but in the harm thus done to both classes, the 
 latter are by far the greatest sufferers, — their industry being 
 paralysed, their affections seared, their minds demoralised, 
 and their poverty confirmed. 
 
 What cruelty ! exclaims some sanctimonious anti-Mal- 
 thusian, to discourage the marriages of the lower orders, 
 and what scandalous immorality would be the consequence 
 of success in this object ! Why, the prudential restraint 
 which prevents improvident matches, is in full operation 
 throughout the whole of the middling and upper classes, 
 without being felt as an oppression, and without any in- 
 crease of immorality. Even if their temporary celibacy were 
 to increase one vice of the lower orders, it would diminish 
 fifty others, by improving their circumstances, and removing 
 the temptations of want and destitution. Pauperism is the 
 hot-bed of crime, and good circumstances are the best 
 security for good conduct. 
 
 POPULARITY — the brightness of a falling star,— the 
 fleeting splendour of a rainbow, — the bubble that is sure 
 
 to witness the recent modification of the Poor Laws, it is impossible to 
 say. — Ed. 
 
282 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 to burst by its very inflation. The politician who, in these 
 lunatic times, hopes to adapt himself to all the changes of 
 public opinion, should qualify for the task by attempting to 
 make a pair of stays for the moon, which assumes a new 
 form and figure every night. 
 
 POPULATION. — The proportion between the sexes 
 seems to be governed by a general and permanent law, 
 which, doubtless, keeps them at the standard best adapted 
 for human happiness. Wherever accurate registers are kept, 
 we know that the number of males born exceeds the females ; 
 the ratio being between fifteen to fourteen, and twenty-five 
 to twenty-four. In England and Wales, from i8ioto 1820, 
 they were as sixteen to fifteen, very nearly the same as in 
 France. And yet, partly owing to the greater longevity of 
 females, — to the loss of male life in the military and naval 
 service, or in unwholesome manufactures, — to emigration, 
 and other circumstances, it is found, throughout Europe, 
 that the females exceed the males. In this uniformity of 
 the laws of population, we behold a new and gratifying proof 
 of a superintending Providence — of a common Father, who, 
 making no distinctions of clime or religion, of rank or 
 station, subjects the whole family of mankind to the same 
 paternal control. 
 
 POSSIBLE. — In order to effect the utmost possible, we 
 must be careful not to throw away our strength in straining- 
 after the impossible, and the unattainable, least we exemplify 
 the fable of the dog and the shadow. " Search not into the 
 things above thy strength." 
 
 " Sors tua mortalis ; non est mortale quod optas." 
 POSTHUMOUS GLORY— a revenue payable to our 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 283 
 
 ghosts ; an ignis fatuusj an exhalation arising from the 
 ashes and corruption of the body; the glow-worm of the 
 grave; a Jack-o'-lantern, of which a skeleton is the Jack, 
 and the lantern a dark one ; protracted oblivion ; the short 
 twilight that survives the setting of the vital sun, and is 
 presently quenched in the darkness of night. "Ashes to 
 ashes, and dust to dust," may be said of our fame, as well 
 as of our frame : one is buried very soon after the other. 
 When the rattling earth is cast upon our coffin, it sends 
 up a hollow sound, which, after a few faint echoes, dies 
 and is buried in oblivious silence. That fleeting noise is 
 our posthumous renown. Living glory is the advantage of 
 being known to those whom you don't know ; — posthumous 
 glory is enjoying a celebrity from which you can derive 
 no enjoyment, and enabling every puppy in existence to 
 feel his superiority over you by repeating the old dictum, 
 that a living dog is better than a dead lion, or by quoting 
 from Shakspeare — " I like not such grinning honour as Sir 
 Walter hath!" 
 
 POSTS and PLACES.— It was a complaint of D'Alem- 
 bert, that men so completely exhausted their industry in 
 canvassing for places, as to have none left for the perform- 
 ance of their duties. Query — Have public men improved in 
 this respect since the days of D'Alembert ? 
 
 POVERTY. — To the generous-minded, it is the greatest 
 evil of a narrow fortune that they must sometimes taste the 
 humiliation of receiving, and can rarely enjoy the luxury 
 of conferring benefits. None can feel for the poor so well 
 as the poor, and none, therefore, can so well appreciate the 
 painfulness of being unable to relieve the distress with which 
 they so keenly sympathise. 
 
 Riches, it was once observed, only keep out the single evil 
 
284 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of poverty. True ! was the reply — but how much good do 
 they let in ! Whatever may be the talents of a poor man, 
 they will not have their fair share of influence ; for few will 
 respect the understanding that is of so little advantage to its 
 owner, and still fewer is the number of those who will doubt 
 the abilities that have made a fool rich. Nevertheless, there 
 are many chances in favour of the sufferers under impecu- 
 niosity ; for, if Necessity be the mother of Invention, Poverty 
 is the father of Industry ; and the child of such parents has 
 a much better prospect of achieving honours and distinc- 
 tion than the rich man's son. Chief Justice Kenyon once 
 said to a wealthy friend, who asked his opinion as to the 
 probable success of his son at the Bar — " Let him spend 
 his own fortune forthwith ; marry, and spend his wife's, 
 and then he may be expected to apply with energy to his 
 profession." 
 
 PRACTICE — does not always make perfect. Curran, 
 when told by his physician, that he seemed to cough with 
 more difficulty, replied — " That is odd enough, for I have 
 been practising all night." 
 
 PRAISE — that which costs us nothing, and which we are, 
 nevertheless, the most unwilling to bestow upon others, even 
 where it is most due, though we sometimes claim it the more 
 for ourselves, the less we deserve it ; not reflecting that the 
 breath of self-eulogy soils the face of the speaker, even as the 
 censer is dimmed by the smoke of its own perfume. 
 
 Which of us would desiderate the expressive silence re- 
 commended by Scaliger as the most appropriate compliment 
 to Virgil ? — " De Virgilio nunquam loque?idum; nam omnes 
 omnium laudes superat." Few people thank you for praising 
 the qualities they really possess; to win their hearts, you 
 must eulogise those in which they are deficient. As this is 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 285 
 
 the most subtle of all flattery, so is it the most acceptable. 
 In general, we have little reason to be grateful to those who 
 speak the strict truth of us, and we are the more bound to 
 acknowledge the kindness of those who flatter us by agree- 
 able falsehoods. Stratonice, the bald wife of Seleucus, gave 
 six hundred crowns to a poet, who extolled the beauty and 
 profusion of her hair. One thing I would counsel to authors 
 — never to make any allusion to themselves. If from sheer 
 modesty, they speak disparagingly of their own works, their 
 averments are set down for gospel; if they assume the 
 smallest modicum of merit, their claim is cited as an instance 
 of inordinate vanity. Silence is sapience. 
 
 The best praise which you can bestow on an author, or an 
 artist, is to show that you have studied and understand his 
 works. When Augustin Caracci pronounced a long discourse 
 in honour of the Laocoon, all were astonished that his brother 
 Annibal said nothing of that celebrated chef-d'oeuvre. 
 Divining their thoughts, the latter took a piece of chalk, 
 and drew the group against the wall as accurately as if he 
 had it before his eyes ; a silent panegyric, which no rhetoric 
 could have surpassed. 
 
 " Our praise of beginners," says Rochefoucauld, " often 
 proceeds from our envy of those who have already suc- 
 ceeded." This is a secret well known to critics ; but they 
 do not seem to be aware that sincerely to praise merit is, in 
 some degree, to share it. 
 
 PRAYER-BOOKS— answer many useful purposes, besides 
 that of being carefully laid on the drawing-room table every 
 Sunday morning. Were it not for these little manuals, 
 people would have nothing to hold before their faces at 
 church, when they are gaping, or ogling their neighbours, or 
 quizzing a new bonnet in the next pew. But the most appro- 
 priate, praiseworthy, and important object to which a prayer- 
 
286 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 book can be applied, is its enabling you to afford incontestable 
 proof that you keep a man-servant, when you enter the house 
 of God to forswear the pomps and vanities of this wicked 
 world. I have known ladies of all ages who could carry, for 
 any distance, a pet poodle, weighing twenty-nine pounds and 
 twelve ounces ; but I have seldom known a female of any 
 age who, having a man-servant, could carry a prayer-book, 
 weighing four ounces and four pennyweights, from the 
 church-door to the door of her pew. As there is a great 
 inconvenience in crowding the aisles with lacqueys, going 
 and returning, both at the commencement and the end of 
 service, I would propose that all ladies should either carry 
 their own prayer-books, or lock them up in their pews ; and 
 that those who are entitled to that pious distinction, should 
 have a large label upon their backs, inscribed, " I keep a 
 footman." By this measure we should avoid the incon- 
 venience of which I have complained, while the fair label- 
 bearers, carrying their footman at their back, instead of 
 having him always in their head, would still obtain due 
 credit for that Christian humility and devout sense of the 
 proper objects of church-going, which are so clearly evi- 
 denced by the display of a handsome man, in a handsome 
 blue livery, with crested buttons, crimson collar and facings, 
 tufted shoulder knots, long worsted tags, and silken tassels ! 
 
 PRECEDENT, Authority of— substituting a decision or 
 an opinion for a principle, or a truth, and thus running the 
 risk of perpetuating error, by making another man's folly the 
 guide of your wisdom. Had the precedent of one age always 
 been a rule for the next, the world would have been station- 
 ary, and we should never have emerged from barbarism. If 
 this slavish adherence to former decisions gave us a fixed 
 and immutable system, there would be some compensation 
 for its being a wrong one ; but the glorious uncertainty of the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 287 
 
 law, based as it is upon precedent, has passed into a by-word. 
 A weathercock, even when it has become so rusty that it will 
 not traverse, may occasionally point in the right direction ; 
 but one that hangs so loosely as to be perpetually shuffling 
 and veering, without reference to the quarter whence the 
 wind blows, can only serve to puzzle and mislead. 
 
 PRECEPT — without example, is like a waterman, who 
 looks one way and rows another. What avails the know- 
 ledge of good and evil, if we do what we ought to avoid, and 
 avoid what we ought to do ? A direction post may point out 
 the right road, without being obliged to follow it; but human 
 finger posts, especially teachers and preachers, have not the 
 same privilege. When a man's life gives the lie to his tongue, 
 we naturally believe the former, rather than the latter. Phari- 
 saical professions are but as a tinkling cymbal; we cannot 
 listen patiently to the voice of the hypocrite, charm he never 
 so wisely; but there is a silent eloquence in the morality of a 
 whole life, that is irresistible. Precept and example, like the 
 blades of a pair of scissors, are admirably adapted to their 
 end, when conjoined: separated they lose the greater portion 
 of their utility. Tertullian says, that even our writings blush 
 when our actions do not correspond with them. Ought not 
 this inconsistency rather to produce a contrary effect, and to 
 prevent our writings from being read ? 
 
 He who teaches what he does not perform, may be com- 
 pared to a sun-dial on the front of a house, which instructs 
 the passenger, but not the tenant. " Eqnide?n beatos fiuto" 
 says Pliny, " quibus Deorum mwiere datum est, aut facere 
 scribenda, aut legenda scriberej beatissimos vere quibus 
 utrinque? " Happy are they to whom the gods have given 
 the power, either to perform actions worthy to be recorded, 
 or to write things worthy to be read : happier still are they 
 in whom both powers are united." 
 
288 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN— whose early intellectual 
 development is often the harbinger of a premature decay, 
 may be compared to Pliny's Amygdala, or almond tree, of 
 which the early buds and immature fruits were cut off by the 
 frosts of spring. 
 
 PRESS — the steam engine of moral power, which, directed 
 by the spirit of the age, will eventually crush imposture, 
 superstition, and tyranny. The liberty of the press is the 
 true measure of all other liberty, for all freedom without this 
 must be merely nominal. To stifle the nascent thought, is a 
 moral infanticide, a treason against human nature. What 
 can a man call his own, if his thought does not belong to 
 him? King Hezekias is the first recorded enemy to the 
 liberty of the press : he suppressed a book which treated of 
 the virtues of plants, for fear it should be abused, and en- 
 gender maladies ; a shrewd and notable reason, well worthy 
 of a modern Attorney-general. 
 
 PRIDE.—" My brethren," said Swift in a sermon, " there 
 are three sorts of pride — of birth, of riches, and of talents. 
 I shall not now speak of the latter, none of you being liable 
 to that abominable vice." 
 
 If we add to our pride, what we cut off from less favourite 
 faults, we are merely taking our errors out of one pocket to 
 put them into another. 
 
 PRIESTHOOD.— When the word of God, chained up in 
 the Latin tongue, was a sealed book to the public ; when the 
 mere ability to read entitled a man to the ftrivilegium cleri- 
 calej when the nation, steeped in ignorance, and conse- 
 quently in superstition, looked up to the clergy as the means 
 of salvation, and the sole depository of that learning and 
 knowledge which are always worldly power; we can under- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 2 3 9 
 
 stand why their authority should be almost unlimited, and 
 little marvel, that, like all despotism, it should be grossly 
 abused. The laws, of which the clergy then had the chief 
 enactment, having exempted them from almost every per- 
 sonal duty, they attempted a total exemption from almost 
 every secular tie. " But, as the overflowing of waters," says 
 Sir Edward Coke, "doth many times make the river to lose 
 its proper channel, so, in times past, ecclesiastical persons, 
 seeking to extend their liberties beyond their due bounds, 
 lost those which of right belonged to them." 
 
 Of these perversions and usurpations the most grievous 
 were abolished by the Reformation : which, however, effec- 
 tually provided for the corruption, and final unpopularity of 
 the Church, when it bequeathed to it a spiritual nobility, 
 tithes, pluralities, wealthy sinecures, and non-residence. In 
 morals, piety, and learning, the clergy, as a body, are not 
 only unexceptionable, but most exemplary ; and yet, in the 
 most religious country in the world, they are confessedly not 
 so popular as they ought to be. Why ? Because, instead of 
 being a-head of the people, as has always hitherto been the 
 case, they are only on a par with them in general informa- 
 tion, and occasionally behind them in the desire of improve- 
 ment, in liberality, and in the spirit of the age, the only 
 articles whereof some of their body do not seem anxious to 
 take tithe. This censure must not be passed without except- 
 ing many distinguished individuals, to whose enlightened 
 views the writer is proud to do justice. A substitution for 
 the obnoxious tithes, and a reform of the Church abuses, may 
 restore to the clergy all their lost influence and popularity, 
 nor yet encroach upon that decent and sufficing provision, 
 beneath which, or above which, no minister can long pre- 
 serve the respect of his flock. Upon the aggregate property 
 of the Church none seek to make inroad, but all must feel 
 that it would be much better secured by a more equal 
 
290 
 
 THE TIN TRUMPET 
 
 distribution, and by a timely reform, which, in order to 
 ensure its friendly spirit, ought to emanate from the Church 
 itself. 
 
 PRIMOGENITURE— disinheriting a whole unoffending 
 family, in order that the accident of an accident, viz., the 
 eldest son of an eldest son, very possibly the last in merit, 
 though the first in birth,, may be endowed with the 
 patrimony of his brothers and sisters, each of whom may 
 exclaim — ■ 
 
 ' ' Sum pauper, non culpa mea, sed cu'pa parentum, 
 Qui me fratre meo non genuere prius." 
 
 Equally opposed to nature, reason, morality, and sound 
 policy, this barbarous remnant of the doctrine which main- 
 tains the many to be made for the few, not the few for the 
 many, has been a pregnant source of private as well as 
 public corruption. The father whose estate is entailed has 
 lost much of his moral influence over his children, being 
 equally unable to reward the duty and affection of the 
 juniors, or to control and punish the excesses of his heir., 
 whose independence too often occasions him to be prema- 
 turely extravagant, profligate, and unfilial. Numerous and 
 notorious are the family feuds thus engendered, for Primo- 
 geniture destroys all the ties of consanguinity. An observant 
 foreigner has noticed, that the English aristocracy, generally 
 alienated from their eldest son, doat, nevertheless, on their 
 eldest grandson, because they see in him an avenger of their 
 wrongs, and the future tormenter of him by whom they 
 themselves have been tormented. What a revolting picture 
 of perverted affection ! 
 
 Nor are the social and fraternal feelings less distorted. 
 With what a calm heartlessness will an elder son, rolling in 
 wealth and luxury, see his brothers struggling with poverty, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 291 
 
 nor feel himself bound to offer them the least assistance ! " I 
 must live," sorrowfully exclaimed a poor cadet, when solicit- 
 ing a small loan from the heir of a rich family. " Je rten 
 vols pas la ne'cessite" was the brother's reply ; and his un- 
 feeling rejection of the suit was abundantly justified by that 
 law of Primogeniture, which has completely superseded the 
 law of nature. So much for its corrupting effects upon 
 private life. 
 
 That it is not less demoralising in a public point of view, 
 is established by the fact, that our aristocracy, for ages past, 
 have had no other means of providing for their younger sons, 
 than by making them state-paupers, and procuring them 
 pensions, sinecures, civil or military appointments, and places 
 in the colonies or the Church ; so that they have a deep 
 interest in upholding abuses of every description, and in 
 monopolising for their own order, and by an undue influence, 
 those employments which ought to be open to merit, and to 
 candidates of every class. What can we then expect from an 
 unreformed House of Lords ? Primogeniture, as a consti- 
 tuent element of nobility, begins in injustice, continues by 
 acquiescence, and is perpetuated by habit, until at last, the 
 hoary abuse shakes the grey hairs of antiquity at us, and 
 gives itself out for the wisdom of ages. 
 
 " It is a fact highly honourable to the character of the 
 French nation, that when De Villele attempted to revive the 
 - droit d'ainesse,' there were amongst the numerous petitioners 
 against the measure, the names of many who would have 
 benefited by the change, but who paid less regard to their 
 own interest than to the suggestions of natural affection. 
 They were too noble-minded to barter the rights and honour 
 of their brothers for wealth or worldly distinction. The same 
 feelings of iustice and generosity have distinguished the 
 citizens of Virginia, where, when the paternal estate has been 
 bequeathed entire to the eldest son, he has frequently been 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 known to divide it equally among his brothers and sisters. 
 In both these cases an opposite conduct would have been 
 censured by public opinion, and would have incurred a 
 degree of odium which is to be found in those countries only 
 where the natural instinct of justice is not perverted by 
 luxury, and the sympathies and charities of life are pure and 
 unsullied. How different is the picture which the mother 
 country would present to the eye of the indignant North 
 American ! The portions of our younger nobility, like the 
 wages of our peasantry, are made out of a poor-rate ; pride 
 and poverty are encouraged by the same policy, and the 
 gentleman and the labourer are equally paupers." — English- 
 man's Magazine. 
 
 It has been urged, that the abolition of primogeniture and 
 entail would rapidly pauperise the land, by its continual sub- 
 division into small allotments. But it is already pauperised, 
 where it is not fattened into disease; for the few are as much 
 too rich, as the many are too poor; and if that be the best 
 system which confers the greatest happiness upon the 
 greatest number, a more equal distribution of the general 
 wealth would surely be an improvement for all. The fine 
 arts might suffer, for want of wealthy patrons ; but the useful 
 arts would receive an impulse from the greater diffusion of 
 competency ; and what would be gained in the latter direc- 
 tion might well atone for the loss in the former. A nation 
 may pay too dear for the arts. It is, doubtless, fine to talk 
 of an Augustan era, and Augustus himself was said to boast 
 that he had found Rome of brick, and left it of marble ; but 
 if he had added, as in truth he might, that he had found 
 Rome free, and had left it enslaved, what patriot would not 
 have felt the city dishonoured by its architectural honours ? 
 
 The constant reports, in our papers, of law-suits between 
 relations, mostly originating in the unjust system of Primo- 
 geniture, reminds one of Malherbe, when he was reproached 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 293 
 
 for being always at law with his family. — " With whom, 
 then," he asked, " would you have me be at variance? The 
 Turks and Muscovites will not quarrel with me." 
 
 It was well said by one whose elder brother, a dissolute 
 and unhappy man, had been vaunting the extent of the 
 family estate — " I should envy you for what you have, did 
 I not pity you for what you are." The same, when once 
 walking with his senior, suddenly seized his arms, hurried 
 him on, and exclaimed, with a look of pretended alarm — 
 " Away ! away ! your life is in danger — save me from the 
 entailed estate !" — at the same time pointing to a board 
 set up in an old gravel-pit, with the following inscription — 
 " Any one may shoot rubbish here." — T. H. is made respon- 
 sible for the truth of this anecdote, though it may possibly 
 be as old as the venerable Josephus Molitor. 
 
 PROMULGATION— the most essential part of a law, 
 and one, nevertheless, which is the most completely neg- 
 lected, hundreds and thousands of poor wretches having 
 been punished under enactments of whose existence they 
 were utterly ignorant. — " You are rather hard upon the 
 canine race, unless they can read," said a foreigner, "for 
 I see written up in various places, ' All dogs found in these 
 grounds will be shot.' " Our laws are still harder upon the 
 human race, for, though the quadrupeds cannot read, we 
 presume them to have owners who can, and who will keep 
 them out of danger; whereas the biped, even if he be able to 
 spell, has no warning set up to put him on his guard, — 
 and if he cannot, has no pastor or master who will apprise 
 him of his danger. We have declared it illegal to set steel 
 traps and spring-guns in unenclosed grounds; and yet we 
 thickly plant those murderous weapons, under the name 
 of Acts of Parliament, in the highways and thoroughfares, 
 keeping the people in the dark, as if on purpose to entrap 
 
29$ THE TIN TRUMPET} 
 
 the greater number of them. It has been objected, that 
 they would not understand the Acts if they were placed 
 before their eyes. Then they are not bound to obey them. 
 Reason, justice, and humanity proclaim, that no enactment, 
 especially a penal one, can be obligatory it it be utterly 
 unintelligible. The barbarous jargon in which they are now 
 written, should make way for brevity and plain English. 
 It might be well if a summary or digest of every law 
 affecting the people were printed for circulation, and affixed 
 to every church door. It might be better still, if every 
 clergyman were obliged to recapitulate and comment upon 
 it from the pulpit. We are not always sure that, by ex- 
 pounding the laws of God, the preacher can show us the 
 way to heaven ; but by explaining the laws of man, there is 
 little doubt that he might prove a very valuable guide to the 
 poor in their earthly pilgrimage. 
 
 PROPHECIES, The — were never meant as a Moore's 
 Almanac, or as riddles for every blind CEdipus to guess at ; 
 and yet a year rarely passes without some new version of 
 the Book of Revelation, ingeniously adapted to the gazettes 
 and current events of the period, by the half-crazy enthu- 
 siasts who seem to have succeeded to the old dabblers in 
 judicial astrology. Vanity and self-love persuade these 
 modern seers, not only that the era to which they belong 
 — that insignificant and fleeting point of time called the 
 present — must be the all-important one shadowed forth by 
 the inspired writers, but that they must be the chosen instru- 
 ments to establish the connection between the Apocalypse 
 and last Saturday's newspaper. This year's expounder regu- 
 larly falsifies the last, but, as 
 
 " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," 
 
 new ones constantly arise, who being, if possible, still more 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 295 
 
 peremptory and still more wrong than their predecessors, 
 entangle themselves with the first little horn, and the second 
 little horn, and are generally left in a dilemma between 
 the two. 
 
 This gipsy-like irreverence should be discountenanced by 
 all sober Christians. The Apostle tells us that — " the things 
 of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God : " — and it 
 cannot be for edification to see the interpreters warring 
 with each other, as well as with the sacred volume, and 
 thus encouraging the scoffer, while they bewilder the devout 
 inquirer. 
 
 PROSELYTISM — self-love, seeking to make converts to 
 our own opinion, disguised as the love of God, seeking to 
 win votaries to the true faith. If all religions were to be 
 engaged in this pursuit, and all have an equal right, the 
 crusades would be renewed, and the whole world would soon 
 become an arena for theological strife. 
 
 A Frenchwoman, who had married a Lutheran, made an 
 offering to her patron Saint, for the purpose of procuring her 
 husband's conversion to Catholicism. While she was waiting 
 the effect of her prayers and donations, the good man fell 
 sick and died, upon which the grateful v/ife exclaimed — " Ah ! 
 there is no Saint like the holy St. Catherine. She has 
 graciously given me even more than I asked ! " 
 
 A traveller, who had resided some time in Southern 
 Africa, being asked whether the missionaries had been 
 successful in civilising the natives, replied — " So much so, 
 that I have known hundreds of negroes, who thought no 
 more of lying, drinking, or swearing, than any European 
 whatever." 
 
 PROSPERITY— indurates; adversity intenerates. The 
 human heart is like a feather-bed — it must be roughly 
 
sq6 . THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 handled, well shaken, and exposed to a variety of turns, to 
 prevent its becoming hard and knotty. Not without good 
 reason does our liturgy instruct us to pray for divine pro- 
 tection " in the hour of our wealth," for Satan, 
 
 ' ' wiser than before, 
 
 Now tempts by making rich, not making poor :" 
 
 and our dangers and trials invariably increase with our 
 prosperity. Then comes the withering discovery that opu- 
 lence is not happiness, for the shadows that surround us 
 are invariably the darkest when the sun of our fortune shines 
 the most brightly. Very often, too, we are only the more 
 ridiculous, as well as unhappy, for being tossed in Fortune's 
 blanket, and elevated above the heads of our fellows, a pro- 
 cess whir.h often turns our own. It matters little to be worth 
 money, if we are worth nothing else. 
 
 PROVINCIALISM.— There is a provincialism of mind 
 as well as of accent — a nationality of counties. Manners 
 make the man, and localities tend to make the manners. 
 The character of a whole people may be homogeneous, 
 though compounded of many opposite ingredients; as spirit 
 and water, sugar and acid, are necessary to the integrity of 
 punch. 
 
 PRUDENCE — is of relative merit, according to its de- 
 gree and the necessity for its exercise. It should no more 
 be prominently noticeable in the conduct of a prosperous 
 man, than prudery in the demeanour of a virtuous woman. 
 When the rainy day comes, for which over-cautious niggards 
 have been long providing, Fortune often delights to take 
 them by the head and shoulders, and thrust them into the 
 middle of the shower. 
 
 When thus limited to self-interest, prudence is inferior 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 297 
 
 to the instinct of animals, which is sometimes generous and 
 disinterested. Calculation, the first attribute of Reason, 
 should never render us incapable of the first of the virtues — 
 a sacrifice of self. The head must not be allowed to pre- 
 dominate over the heart. An expansive humanism, which 
 is only a more enlarged calculation, would confirm the 
 Scripture injunction, and teach us to love our neighbour 
 as ourself. 
 
 Over-caution and over-preparation not seldom defeat their 
 own object. Washington Irving tells us of a Dutchman, 
 who, having to leap a ditch, went back three miles, that he 
 might have a good run at it, and found himself so com- 
 pletely winded, when he arrived at it again, that he was 
 obliged to sit down on the wrong side to recover his breath- 
 — Reader pour mieux sauter is only advisable when the 
 preparation bears a due proportion to the thing to be 
 performed. 
 
 All, however, must admire the prudence and caution of 
 the banker's clerk in America, in giving evidence on a 
 trial for forgery. " When I do hold the check this way, 
 it do look slick like the handwriting of Malachi Hudson; — 
 when I do hold it that way, it is not at all like Malachi's 
 signature, so that upon the whole I should say it's about 
 middling." 
 
 PUBLIC OPINION— is a river which digs its own bed. 
 We may occasionally moderate or quicken its course, but it- 
 is very difficult to alter it. 
 
 PUFFING — a species of cozenage and trickery much 
 resorted to by the vendors of quack medicines, blacking^ 
 novels, and other trash, for the purpose of gulling the public 
 and cajoling them into a purchase of their wares. The 
 abettors of this derogatory practice maintain that, so far as 
 
298 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 literature is concerned, it is an act of self-defence against 
 the abuse of Reviews. — " What ! " they exclaim, " is a bane 
 to exist without its antidote? are malevolence, scurrility, 
 perversion, and all the captious chicaneries of corrupt hyper- 
 criticism, to have undisputed possession of the literary field ? 
 are authors, ex necessitate, such nefarious felons as not to 
 be allowed benefit of clergy? Nature, where she plants a 
 vegetable poison, generally provides an antidote, so in the 
 moral world she causes sympathies to spring up by the side 
 of antipathies. Extremes, moreover, have an inherent ten- 
 dency towards each other ; the pessimist makes the optimist : 
 and thus it is that the unfairness, the bitterness, the rancour 
 of reviewers have generated those much more excusable fail- 
 ings, if such they may be termed, of superlative, fulsome, 
 high-flown panegyrics." 
 
 Be it observed, that in all these mutual malpractices, 
 acting and re-acting with aggravated effect upon each other, 
 the author has no share; he has parted with his copyright, 
 has no interest in the conflict, and can find no more plea- 
 sure in being made the shuttlecock between the black 
 and white battledore, than would a well-dressed gentleman 
 in being alternately jostled by a miller and a chimney- 
 sweeper. Philautical hyperboles are not less ridiculous and 
 offensive than vain, for we may be assured that the more we 
 speak of ourselves in superlatives, the more will others speak 
 of us in diminutives ; and the less we put ourselves forward, 
 the more will the public be disposed to advance us. — " Prce- 
 Julgebant Cassius et Brutus eo ipso quod eorum effigies non 
 visebantur" says Tacitus. 
 
 It must be confessed that the publisher, when, by constant 
 puffing, he spreads and diffuses the leaves of his favourite 
 book, and purifies the peccant humours of the critical world, 
 has before him the example of nature, who, by a similar 
 process, unfolds the vegetable leaves, and disperses the foul- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 299 
 
 ness and ill-humours of the atmosphere. Even should the 
 amiable encomiast undesignedly bring grist to his own mill, 
 surely he is not more culpable than the miller, who con- 
 fessedly lives by puffs, and yet pursues his avocation without 
 impeachment : so true is it that one man may steal a horse, 
 while another must not look over the hedge ! Both evils will 
 work out their own cure, and puffing the most speedily, if 
 there be any truth in the dictum, that 
 
 " Praise undeserved is censure in disguise ;" 
 
 or, that 
 
 " A vile encomium doubly ridicules, 
 
 Since nothing blackens like the ink of fools." 
 
 Sheridan, in " The Critic," has described the puff-collusive, 
 which is not yet by any means extinct : — 
 
 " If booksellers, now-a-days, do not venture to recom- 
 mend their publications upon the ground of their indelicacy? 
 they scruple not to attract readers by openly setting forth 
 the personality and scandalous nature of the work they are 
 puffing, thus pandering to a vice which is the stigma and 
 opprobrium of the day, adducing as a merit that which ought 
 to condemn the book with every right-thinking and right- 
 feeling reader, and perverting public morals by an un- 
 blushing substitution of wrong for right. * That 's villanous, 
 and shows a most pitiful ambition in him that uses it. Oh, 
 reform it altogether V" 
 
 PUN — a verbal equivocation. If the highest legitimate 
 wit be only a play upon ideas, why may we not tolerate a 
 play upon words, which are the signs of ideas? Such a 
 recreation is at least dabbling in the elements of wit, whereas 
 a starch and formal gravity is an evidence of nothing but 
 dullness. It is much easier to condemn a good pun than 
 to make one, and Dr. Johnson evinced his envy rather 
 
3 oo THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 than his contempt, when he associated punsters and pick- 
 pockets. — We are seldom angry with that which we really 
 despise. 
 
 PUNISHMENTS— being meant for prevention, not re- 
 venge, should be so regulated — " ut poena ad pan cos, metus 
 adomnes perveniatP — Wise is that maxim which says, " Non 
 minus turpe principimulta suppiicia, quam medico multa 
 funeraf and yet we have only lately made the discovery in 
 England, that hanging is the very worst use that a man can 
 be put to. 
 
 Some writers have thought that the state should be not 
 less solicitous to recompense good deeds, than to punish 
 evil ones ; but, perhaps, it is better not to disturb the 
 moralising impression, that virtue is its own best reward. 
 The noblest actions, too, would instantly become liable to a 
 tainting suspicion of motives, if the virtues were to be 
 scheduled, and remunerated according to a fixed tariff. 
 Experience has shown us to what infamous purposes the 
 rewards for the apprehension of malefactors have been 
 perverted by trading informers, and other dealers in blood 
 money. 
 
 Disproportionate punishments are attended with five 
 evils: — they deter prosecutors from coming forward — they 
 draw attention to the crime — awaken pity for the criminal 
 — excite hatred of the law — and occasion the magnitude of 
 the temptation to offence to be measured by the magnitude 
 of the punishment. 
 
 PURGATORY — one of the few inventions of priestcraft 
 that almost deserves to be true ; for a medium was wanting 
 between the two extremes of perdition and salvation. Infi- 
 nite and eternal torment for offences committed in a few 
 brief years of existence, appeared so irreconcileable with the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 301 
 
 divine attributes, that purgatory, as an intermediate and 
 terminable state of punishment, was invented at a very early 
 period of the Church. Harmless and reconciling in theory, 
 it soon became practically perverted by the clergy into a 
 device for the extortion of mass-money, under the pretext of 
 shortening its duration. Had this abuse been corrected, and 
 the supposed benefits of purgatory extended equally to the 
 poor and the rich, our Church Reformers would, perhaps, 
 have done well to leave this consolatory doctrine as they 
 found it. It may not have the clear warranty of Scripture, 
 but how much did they leave untouched, which was equally 
 unsanctioned by divine authority ! Quevedo, in his Visions, 
 tells us, that an old Spanish nobleman once met his coach- 
 man in purgatory, when the latter exclaimed — " O master, 
 master ! what can ever have brought so good a catholic as 
 you into this miserable place?" — " Ah, my worthy Pedro ! I 
 am justly punished for spoiling that reprobate son of mine. 
 But you, who were ever such a sober, steady, well-conducted 
 man, what can have brought you hither ? ;; — " Ah, master, 
 master ! " snivelled Pedro, " I am brought here for being the 
 father of that reprobate son of yours \" 
 
 PURITANISM — the innocence of the vicious — external 
 sanctimony, assumed as a cover for internal laxity. When- 
 ever we smell musk or other pungent perfumes, we may 
 fairly suspect that the wearer must have some strong 
 effluvium to conquer ; and where we observe a Pharisaical 
 display of prudery and piety, we shall seldom err in pro- 
 nouncing that it is the disguise of some wolf in sheep's 
 clothing. A nice man, according to Swift, is a man of nasty 
 ideas ; and a pretender to superior purity will often be found 
 much dirtier than his neighbours. Some of these Pharisees 
 will occasionally betray them^lves by over-acting their 
 part. " I never saw such an indelicate gentleman as that at 
 
3 o2 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the opposite house ! " exclaimed a young female saint, " he 
 must have seen that I did not choose to pull down the blind, 
 and yet he has been watching me the whole time I have been 
 changing my dress." Two damsels, of the same puritanical 
 stamp, encountering Dr. Johnson, shortly after the publica- 
 tion of his Dictionary, complimented him on his having 
 omitted all the gross and objectionable words. " What, my 
 dears ! " said the doctor, " have you been looking out for 
 them already ?" 
 
 UAKER.— " If external rites," Archbishop Til- 
 lotson affirms, "have ate out the heart of 
 religion in the Church of Rome, religion should 
 seem to have made the deepest impression on 
 the Quakers, who are the most averse from 
 external ceremonies and observances, and are therefore 
 hated by the formalists of all churches." That no honours 
 might be wanting to this truly Christian sect, they have been 
 dignified by the abuse of Cobbett, who, in allusion to their 
 dress, and their rejection of the ceremony of baptism, terms 
 them, in choice Billingsgate, " a set of unbaptized, buttonless 
 blackguards ! " 
 
 Many have admired and eulogised the mild creed, the 
 universal charity, the fraternal love, the well-directed in- 
 dustry, the moral rectitude, the commercial probity, the strict 
 veracity, the general amiability, of these religionists, among 
 whom are to be found no malefactors, no beggars, no 
 infamous members of any sort, and who imagine that 
 they best prove themselves to be good Christians, by being 
 good subjects, good neighbours, good men. But how indis- 
 creet, how dangerous, nay, how immoral, is such eulogy ! 
 What! can we forget that they arrogantly presume to be 
 pious and virtuous, without paying tithes ; — that they dare 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 303 
 
 to have a church, not only without sacraments, but even 
 without a priesthood; — and that they constitute the best 
 organised and most harmonious religious society in the 
 world, not only without a spiritual aristocracy, but even 
 without a head? What profanation, too, that they should 
 consider marriage a simple civil contract, should solemnize 
 it as such, and yet never offer to the public a single instance 
 of adultery or divorce ! What a pestilential example is all 
 this, and how injurious to true, primitive, unadulterated 
 Christianity, as it is maintained and illustrated in our vene- 
 rable Established Church ! ! Let us hear no more of the 
 Quakers, unless it be for the purpose of proscribing and 
 persecuting them ! 
 
 " QUARRELS — would never last long," says Rochefou- 
 cauld, " if the fault were only on one side." The Spanish 
 proverb, which tells us to beware of a reconciled friend, in- 
 culcates an ungenerous suspicion. In the case of lovers, we 
 have the authority of Terence for affirming that — Amantium 
 ira amoris redintegratio est; — and many are the instances 
 among friends, where a momentary rupture has only served 
 to consolidate the subsequent attachment, as the broken 
 bone, that is well set, usually becomes stronger than it was 
 before. 
 
 QUIBBLE— QUIRK— QUIDDET— see Law Proceed- 
 ings. " True ! " cried a lady, when reproached with the 
 inconsistent marriage she had made, " I have often said I 
 never would marry a parson, or a Scotchman, or a Presby- 
 terian ; but I never said I would not marry a Scotch 
 Presbyterian parson." 
 
 Roger Kemble's wife had been forbidden to marry an 
 actor, and her father was inexorable at her disobedience ; 
 but, after having seen her husband on the stage, he relented, 
 
3o 4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 and forgave her, with the observation of — " Well, well, I see 
 you have not disobeyed me after all ; for the man is not an 
 actor, and never will be an actor." 
 
 QUID PRO QUO.— Every one has heard the reply of 
 Montague Matthew, when he was spoken to for Matthew 
 Montague, — that there is a great difference between a 
 chestnut horse and a horse chestnut ; but this seems to have 
 been forgotten, nevertheless, by an unlucky wight, who, 
 being engaged to dine at the Green Man at Dulwich, desired 
 to be driven to the Dull Man, at Greenwich, and lost his 
 dinner by a quid pro quo. 
 
 T. H. observed of the mate of a Whitby merchant ship, 
 who could do nothing without his quid, that he had classical 
 authority for " Nil actum rejmtans dum quid sufteresset 
 agendum" 
 
 AILLERY — has been compared to a light which 
 dazzles, but does not burn : this, however, de- 
 pends on the skill with which it is managed ; 
 for many a man, without extracting its bril- 
 liance, may burn his fingers in playing with this 
 dangerous pyrotechnic. Pleasant enough to make game of 
 your friends, by shooting your wit at them, but if your 
 merry bantering degenerates into coarse and offensive per- 
 sonality, nobody will pity you, should you chance to be 
 knocked down by the recoil of your own weapon. He who 
 gives pain, however little, must not complain should it be 
 retorted with a disproportionate severity; for retaliation 
 always adds interest in paying off old scores, and sometimes 
 a very usurious one. Wags should recollect, that the amuse- 
 ment of fencing with one's friends is very different from the 
 anatomical process of cutting them up. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 505 
 
 A coxcomb, not very remarkable for the acuteness of his 
 feelings or his wit, wishing to banter a testy old gentleman, 
 who had lately garnished his mouth with a complete set of 
 false teeth, flippantly inquired, — " Well, my good Sir ! I 
 have often heard you complain of your masticators — pray, 
 when do you expect to be again troubled with the tooth- 
 ache ?" — " When you have an affection of the heart, or a 
 brain fever," was the reply. Not less ready and biting was 
 the retort of the long-eared Irishman, who, being banteringly 
 asked — " Paddy, my jewel ! why don't you get your ears 
 cropped ? They are too large for a man ! " replied — " And. 
 yours are too small for an ass." 
 
 A well-known scapegrace, wishing to rally a friend who 
 had a morbid horror of death, asked him, as they were 
 passing a country church during the performance of a 
 funeral, whether the tolling bell did not put him in mind of 
 his latter end. — " No; but the rope does of yours," was the 
 caustic reply. 
 
 REASON — the proud prerogative which confers on man 
 the exclusive privilege of acting and conversing irrationally. 
 No man is opposed to reason, unless reason is opposed to 
 him ; to protest against it, is to confess that you fear it, and 
 they who interdict its use, on account of the danger of its 
 abuse, may as well build a house without windows, for fear 
 the lightning should enter it, or put out their eyes, lest they 
 should go astray. To give reasons against the employment 
 of reason, is to refute yourself, and to close up your mind tili 
 it resembles the bower described by Shakspeare, — 
 
 " Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, 
 Forbid the sun to enter." 
 
 . And yet we have theologians, who, proscribing the exercise 
 of man's distinguishing and most noble attribute, in the most 
 
306 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 exalted object to which it can be directed — the contemplation 
 of the Deity, and the study of his revealed will, — would con- 
 fine human nature, in its highest aspirations, to mere animal 
 instincts. Surely this is a triple treason; — first, against the 
 majesty of God ; secondly, against the dignity of his human 
 image; thirdly, against the writings he inspired. In various 
 places do the Scriptures themselves repudiate this degrading 
 doctrine. St. Paul desires us to "prove all things;" and 
 St. Peter, in his first epistle, expressly says, " Be ready 
 always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a rea- 
 son of the hope that is in you." — iii. 15. And as we are else- 
 where told that the letter killeth, how are we to discover the 
 saving spirit, except by the exercise of our intellectual facul- 
 ties ? To imagine that the Bible is opposed to reason, is to 
 impugn its veracity. Mark the opinion of the pious Locke 
 upon the subject: "No mission can be looked on to be 
 divine, that delivers anything derogating from the honour of 
 the one, only, true, invisible God; or inconsistent with 
 natural religion, and the rules of morality; because God, 
 having discovered to men the unity and Majesty of his 
 eternal Godhead, and the truths of natural religion and 
 morality by the light of reason, he cannot be supposed to 
 back the contrary by revelation; for that would be to destroy 
 the evidence and use of reason, without which, men cannot 
 be able to distinguish divine revelation from diabolical im- 
 posture."* 
 
 And to the same purport, Bishop Burnet, in his " Exposi- 
 tion of the 19th Article," tells us, "that if we observe the 
 style and method of the Scriptures, we shall find in them all 
 over a constant appeal to men's reason, and to their intel- 
 lectual faculties. If the mere dictates of the Church, or of 
 infallible men had been the resolution and foundation of 
 
 * Posthumous Works, p. 226. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 307 
 
 faith, there had been no need of such a long thread of rea- 
 soning and discourse, as both our Saviour used when on 
 earth, and the Apostles used in their writings. We see the 
 way of authority is not taken, but explanations are offered, 
 proofs and illustrations are brought, to convince the mind ; 
 which shows that God, in the clearest manifestation of his 
 will, would deal with us as with rational creatures, who are 
 not to believe, but on persuasion ; and to use our reason, in 
 order to the attaining that persuasion." 
 
 Well would it have been for sound and rational theology, 
 had controversial writers always attended to the dictum of 
 another learned and pious divine, who affirms — " That 
 which has not reason in it, or for it, is man's superstition, 
 and not religion of God's making." — Dr. Whichcote's Ser- 
 mons, p. 117. 
 
 Prohibiting the exercise of this faculty, in matters of 
 opinion, is but an imitation of the Papists, who will not allow 
 the senses to be judges in the case of transubstantiation. 
 Strange ! that instinct, which is the reason of animals, is to 
 be allowed to the feathered, and not to the featherless biped. 
 These irrationalists seem to think, that the intellectual facul- 
 ties of man are like hemlock and henbane, poisonous to the 
 human, But not to the feathered race — Hyosciamus et cicula 
 homines fierimunt, avibus alimentum ftrtzbent. Reason, 
 however, does us all yeoman's service in the defence of any- 
 thing unreasonable. When Paley was asked why he always 
 kept his horse three miles off, he replied — " For exercise." — 
 " But you never ride." — " That is the reason why I keep 
 him at such a distance, for I get all the exercise of the 
 walk." 
 
 Still more ingenious was the logic of the schoolboy, whose 
 companion thought it absurd that Homer should describe 
 Vulcan as being a whole day in falling from the clouds to 
 the earth. — " Nay," argued the acute youth, " this shows his 
 
 x 2 
 
3 c8 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 close adherence to nature ; for you can hardly expect Vulcan 
 to fall as fast as another man, when you recollect that he was 
 lame." His lameness being the consequence of his fall, it 
 must be confessed, that there was unreasonableness enough 
 in this reason to satisfy the most zealous irrationalist. 
 
 REFORM — an adaptation of institutions to circumstances 
 and knowledge, or a restoration to the original purposes, 
 from which they have been perverted, demanded as a right 
 by those who are suffering wrongs, and only denied and 
 abused by those who have been fattening upon abuse. The 
 real Conservatives are the Reformers, the real revolutionists 
 are the corruptionists, who, by opposing quiet, will compel 
 violent change. When the ultras, and men of this class, 
 whose long misrule, and denial of justice, have inflamed the 
 public mind, charge the Reformers with having thrown the 
 whole country into a blaze, thus accusing the extinguisher of 
 being the firebrand, one is reminded of the incendiary, who, 
 in order to avoid detection, turned round and collared the 
 foreman of the engines, exclaiming — " Ha, fellow ! have I 
 caught you ? — This is the rascal who is first and foremost at 
 every fire — seize him ! seize him !" There is no Reform 
 Bill in Turkey, — no factious opposition, — no free* press, — 
 no twopenny trash, — yet, in no country are revolutions so 
 frequent. 
 
 Reform, however, to be useful and durable, must be 
 gradual and cautious. To those radical gentry of the move- 
 ment party, who would be always at work, without calculat- 
 ing the mischief or the cost of their vaunted improvements, 
 I recommend the consideration of the following anecdote : — 
 The celebrated orator Henley advertised, that, in a single lec- 
 ture, he would teach any artisan, of ordinary skill, how to make 
 six pair of good shoes in one day; — nay, six-and-twenty pair, 
 provided there was a sufficiency of materials. The sons of 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 309 
 
 Crispin flocked in crowds, willingly paying a shilling at the 
 door, to be initiated in such a lucrative art, when they be- 
 held the orator seated at a table, on which were placed six 
 pair of new boots. — " Gentlemen ! " he exclaimed, " nothing 
 is so simple and easy as the art which I have undertaken to 
 teach you. Here are a new pair of boots, — here are a large 
 pair of scissors ; — behold ! I cut off the legs of the boots, 
 and you have a new pair of shoes, without the smallest 
 trouble ; and thus may they be multiplied, ad infinitum, sup- 
 posing always that you have a sufficiency of materials." 
 
 REFORMATION.— "The freedom for which our first 
 Reformers contended, did not include any freedom of dissent 
 from the Athanasian Creed. Grotius and Lardner, and 
 Locke and Newton, those great and pious men, who were an 
 honour to human nature, and the most illustrious advocates 
 of Christianity, would have been adjudged by the first 
 Reformers, as well as by the Catholics, by Cranmer and 
 Knox, as well as by Bonner and Beaton, to be worthy of 
 death in the present world, and of everlasting misery in the 
 world to come. The martyrdoms of Servetus in Geneva, 
 and of Joan Bocher in England, are notable instances of the 
 religious freedom which prevailed in the pure and primitive 
 state of the Protestant churches." — Ed. Review, vol. xxvii. 
 p. 165. 
 
 The Reformation was not a struggle for religious freedom, 
 but for Protestant intolerance, instead of Catholic intoler- 
 ance; and the struggle of modern Christians should be for 
 emancipation from all intolerance. To every man thus 
 engaged, may we not piously ejaculate — " Dii tibi dent quce 
 veils / " 
 
 RELIGION, Fashionable — going to Church; making 
 devotion a matter of public form and observance between 
 
3 io THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 man and man, instead of a governing principle, or silent 
 communion between the heart and its Creator; — converting 
 the accessory into the principal, and mistaking the symbol 
 and stimulant of pious inspiration for the inspirer ; — 
 worshipping the type, instead of the archetype ; — being 
 visibly devout, that is to say, when anybody sees you. 
 
 RELIGION, General — an accidental inheritance, for 
 which, whether it be good or bad, we deserve neither praise 
 nor censure, provided that we are sincere and virtuous. 
 
 Let us not, however, be mistaken. Far be it from us to 
 assert, that men should be indifferent to the choice of reli- 
 gion, still less that all are alike. We maintain only, that in 
 the great majority of instances, little or no choice is allowed ; 
 and it is our object to inculcate that humility as to our own 
 opinions, and that toleration for others, in which the most 
 devout are very apt to be the most deficient. 
 
 " Religion is the mind's complexion, 
 Governed by birth, not self-election, 
 And the great mass of us adore 
 Just as our fathers did before. 
 Why should we, then, ourselves exalt 
 
 For what we casually inherit, 
 Or view, in others, as a fault, 
 
 What, in ourselves, we deem a merit ? " 
 
 The religion that renders good men gloomy and unhappy, 
 can scarcely be a true one. Dr. Blair says, in his Sermon on 
 Devotion — " He who does not feel joy in religion, is far from 
 the kingdom of heaven." Never can a slavish and cowering 
 fear afford a proper basis for the religion of so dignified a 
 creature as man, who, in paying honour, must feel that he 
 keeps his honour, and is not disunited from himself, even in 
 his communion with God. Reverence of ourselves is, in 
 fact, the highest of all reverences ; for, in the image of the 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 311 
 
 Deity, we recognise the prototype ; and thus elevated in soul, 
 we may humbly strive to imitate the divine virtues, without 
 pride or presumption. Religion has been designated as the 
 love of the good and the fair, wherever it exists, but chiefly 
 when absolute and boundless excellence is contemplated in 
 " the first good, first perfect, and first fair." With this feeling 
 in their hearts, the virtues could never wander from the right 
 faith ; and yet, how many good men seek it amid the dry 
 spinosities and tortuous labyrinths of theology ! It was a 
 homely saying of Selden, " that men look after religion, as 
 the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his 
 mouth." 
 
 Even a sincere religion may be unconsciously mixed up 
 with carnal impulses ; for when we cannot bring heaven 
 down to earth, we are very apt to take earth up to heaven. 
 That ardent adoration of the Virgin Mary, which has pro- 
 cured for Catholicism the not inappropriate designation of 
 the Marian Religion, was derived probably from the days of 
 chivalry, when a sexual feeling impassioned the worship paid 
 to the celestial idol, and a devout enthusiasm sanctified the 
 homage offered to the earthly one. These spiritual lovers 
 would have done well to perpend the fine saying of the 
 philosopher, Marcus Antoninus — " Thou wilt never do any- 
 thing purely human in a right manner, unless thou knowest 
 the relation it bears to things divine ; nor anything divine, 
 unless thou knowest all the relations it has to things 
 human." 
 
 RELIGION, "Pure and undefiled before God and the 
 Father." — We have placed this last, because it is the last 
 that enters into the contemplation of the numerous classes 
 of Christians, most of whom are too busy in fashioning 
 some fantastical religion of their own, to seek for it in the 
 Scriptures. The devout and rational reader is referred to 
 
3 i2 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the twenty-seventh verse of the first chapter of James. And 
 if he still harbour a doubt which be the works of the flesh, 
 and which of the Spirit, let him peruse St. Paul's Epistle to 
 the Galatians, chap. v. ver. 19 — 26. 
 
 REPARTEE— a smart rejoinder, which, when given im- 
 promptu, even though it should be so hard a hit as to merit 
 the name of a knock down blow, will still stand excused, 
 partly from the ready wit it implies, and partly from its 
 always bearing the semblance of self-defence. When time, 
 however, has been taken to concoct a retort, and an oppor- 
 tunity sought for launching it, not only does it lose all the 
 praise of extemporaneous quickness, but it assumes a cha- 
 racter of revenge rather than of repartee. 
 
 Those repartees are the best which turn your adversary's 
 weapons against himself, as David killed Goliah with his 
 own sword. Abernethy, the celebrated surgeon, finding a 
 large pile of paving stones opposite to his door, on his re- 
 turning home one afternoon in his carriage, swore hastily at 
 the paviour, and desired him to remove them. "Where will 
 I take them to?" asked the Hibernian. "To hell !" cried 
 the choleric surgeon. Paddy leant upon his rammer, and 
 then looking up in his face, said with an arch smile, "Hadn't 
 I better take them to heaven ? — sure they'd be more out of 
 your honour's way." 
 
 REPLY, A ready. — " Carnivorous animals," said a col- 
 legian to the Rev. S. S , " are always provided with claws 
 
 and talons to seize their prey; hoofed animals are invariably 
 graminivorous. Is it, therefore, consistent with the analogies 
 of nature to describe the devil when he goes about seeking 
 whom he may devour, as having a cloven foot?" "Yes," 
 replied the divine; "for we are assured, on scriptural autho- 
 rity, that all flesh is grass." Few better replies are upon 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 313 
 
 record than that of young De Chateaunoeuf, to whom a 
 bishop once said, " If you will tell me where God is, I will 
 give you an orange?" " If you will tell me where He is 
 not, I will give you two," was the child's answer. 
 
 REQUEST, A modest. — When the Duke of Ormonde was 
 .nade Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in Queen Anne's reign, 
 one of his friends applied to him for some preferment, 
 adding, that he was by no means particular, and was willing 
 to accept either a Bishopric, or a Regiment of Horse — or to 
 be made Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. This, 
 however, is surpassed by Horace Walpole's anecdote of a 
 humane jailor in Oxfordshire, who made the following appli- 
 cation to one of his condemned prisoners. " My good friend ! 
 I have a little favour to ask of you, which from your obliging 
 disposition, I doubt not you will readily grant. You are 
 ordered for execution on Friday week. I have a particular 
 engagement on that day : if it makes no difference to you, 
 would you say next Friday instead ? " 
 
 RESOLUTION.— He who sets out by considering all 
 obstacles well — non obstantibus quibuscunque, has half- 
 accomplished his purpose, for the difficulty in human affairs 
 is more often in the mind of the undertaker, than in the 
 nature of the undertaking. With this feeling, and the nil 
 actum reputans dum q?ud superesset agendum, — nothing is 
 impossible. 
 
 RESPECTABILITY — keeping up appearances, paying 
 your bills regularly, walking out now and then with your 
 wife, and going occasionally to church. On the trial of 
 a murderer, a neighbour deposed that he had always con- 
 sidered him a person of the highest respectability, as he had 
 kept a gig for several years. This could only have occurred 
 
3 i4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 in England, where it is held that a man who is worth money, 
 must be a man of worth. 
 
 RETIREMENT from business — a mistake in those who 
 have not an occupation to retire to, as well as from. Such 
 men are never so well or so happily employed, as when they 
 are following the avocation which use has made a second 
 nature to them. The retired butcher in the neighbourhood 
 of Whitby, must have found idleness hard work, when he 
 gave notice to his friends, that he should kill a lamb every 
 Thursday, just by way of amusement. 
 
 RETORT-COURTEOUS.—" I said his beard was not 
 cut well ; he was in the mind it was ; this is called the retort- 
 courteous," says one of the characters in Shakspeare ; but 
 this lucus d non lucendo, does not come up to our modern 
 idea of the term, which should involve some portion of the 
 
 sharpness or smartness of a repartee. Lord G , who is 
 
 vehemently suspected of being descended from Ferdinand 
 Mendez Pinto, since he never opens his mouth without 
 fibbing, made some disparaging statement at White's con- 
 cerning one of the members. The party implicated, who 
 happened to overhear him, came up to his accuser, and said 
 emphatically, " My Lord, you have made an assertion," in- 
 ferring as a matter of course, that he had uttered a falsehood. 
 It is impossible to imagine a more polite, and yet more 
 cit tting way of giving the lie. 
 
 Two of the guests at a public dinner having got into an 
 altercation, one of them, a blustering vulgarian, vociferated, 
 " Sir, you are no gentleman ! " " Sir," said his opponent in 
 a calm voice, and with a derisive smile, — " you are no judge." 
 Both these bon mots are complete and literal instances of the 
 retort-courteous. 
 
 There are retorts uncourteous which can only be justified 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 315 
 
 by the occasion. Talleyrand being pestered with impor- 
 tunate questions by a squinting man, concerning his broken 
 leg, replied, " It is quite crooked, — as you see." 
 
 H. C , a keen sportsman, provoked by a cockney 
 
 horseman who had ridden over two of his hounds, could not 
 forbear swearing at him for his awkwardness. " Sir !" said 
 the offender, drawing up both himself and his horse, and 
 assuming a very consequential look, " I beg to inform you, 
 that I did not come out here to be damned." — " Why then, 
 Sir, you may go home, and be damned." 
 
 " Ah ! Dr. Johnson," exclaimed a Scotchman, " what 
 would you have said of Buchanan, had he been an English- 
 man ? " " Why, Sir," replied Johnson, " I should not have 
 said of Buchanan, had he been an Englishman, what I will 
 now say of him as a Scotchman, that he was the only mart 
 of genius his country ever produced." 
 
 REVENGE — a momentary triumph, of which the satisfac- 
 tion dies at once, and is succeeded by remorse; whereas for- 
 giveness, which is the noblest of all revenges, entails a 
 perpetual pleasure. It was well said by a Roman Emperor, 
 that he wished to put an end to all his enemies, by convert- 
 ing them into friends. 
 
 REVIEW — a work that overlooks the productions it pro- 
 fesses to look over, and judges of books by their authors, not 
 of authors by their books. 
 
 REVIEW, Retrospective. — When we cast a Parthian 
 glance backwards, and embrace in one far darting retrospect 
 our whole existence, divided as it has been into infancy, boy- 
 hood, manhood, and old age, each a sort of separate life, 
 from the variety of thoughts, feelings, and events that it 
 comprises, what a long, long, course of time seems to be con- 
 
3i6 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 densed into the mental operation of a single moment. The 
 period from our own birth to the present hour, appears more 
 extensive and eventful than all that has preceded it, even 
 from the birth of the world ; so different is the impression 
 made by time experienced, and time imagined. In the 
 former case, the view is broken by a succession of land- 
 marks, each throwing back the distance, and giving to the 
 whole the semblance of covering a much larger space than it 
 really occupies. In the latter, we are gazing over an object- 
 less sea, where the horizon is brought nearer to us for want 
 of any standard by which to measure its remoteness. History 
 is the shadow of time; life its substance, and they bear the 
 same relation to one another, that the dim twilight does to 
 the up-risen and visible sun. It is in vain to talk to men of 
 throwing their minds into the past, or into the future, you 
 may as well bid them leap out of themselves, or beyond their 
 shadow. The present is all in all to us. As to the past ages, 
 and those which are to come, " De 11011 apparentibus et noil 
 existentibus eadem est ratio? 
 
 REVIEWER. — With certain honourable exceptions, a 
 reviewer is one who, either having written nothing himself, 
 or having failed in his own literary attempts, kindly under- 
 takes to decide upon the writing of others. " Let those 
 teach others, who themselves excel," was the maxim of 
 former times, but in the march of no-intellect, we have 
 reversed all this : the dunce wields the magisterial rod, the 
 ass sits in the professor's chair, and both are severe, because 
 they have found it much more easy and pleasant not to like, 
 than to do the like. Hi pr<z cceteris alios liberius carpere 
 solent, qui nil proprium ediderunt : — those men are most 
 disposed to depreciate others, who have done nothing them- 
 selves. Such a critic contemplates a book, as a carpenter 
 views a tree, not to weigh the time and contrivance that 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 317 
 
 have been required for its production, not to admire its just 
 proportions, or the beauty of its leaves, not to consider what 
 pleasure or advantage it may bestow upon others, if left to 
 flourish and expand, but merely to calculate how he himself 
 may best turn it to account, by undermining, overthrowing, 
 and cutting it up. As to the poor author, he is merely used 
 as a stalking-horse, behind which the critic levels at the sur- 
 rounding game, giving his steed a lash or two as he ends his 
 diversion. 
 
 Messieurs the Reviewers ! you are like Othello, not for 
 your black looks, nor because of your smothering the inno- 
 cent in their own sheets, but because, " your occupation's 
 gone." Having found out the motives both of puffers and 
 abusers, the public are no more to be deterred from 
 purchasing a clever book by the latter, than cajoled into 
 buying a stupid one by the former. Parodying the words of 
 a well known epigram, we may therefore exclaim : — 
 
 Peace, idiots, —peace ! and both have done, — 
 
 Each kiss his empty brother, 
 For Genius scorns a foe like one, 
 
 And dreads a friend like t'other. 
 
 Should any of the fraternity, nevertheless, feel disposed to 
 notice this little work, they will please to consider them- 
 selves among the honourable exceptions alluded to in the 
 commencement of this article. We scorn to truckle to any 
 man for the poor honours of " full blown Bufo/ ; but candour, 
 is candour ! 
 
 RHETORIC — appealing to the passions instead of the 
 reason of your auditors, and claiming that value for the 
 workmanship, which ought to be measured by the ore alone. 
 An orator is one who can stamp such a value upon counter- 
 feit coin as shall make it pass for genuine. Pitt was a 
 
318 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 rhetorician, or rather declaimer, of this sort, and unfor- 
 tunately, we are now paying in sterling coin for his Birming- 
 ham flash money. 
 
 RICHES — are seldom really despised, though they may 
 be vilipended upon the principle of the fox, who imputed 
 sourness to the unattainable grapes. We cannot well attach 
 too much value to a competency, or too little to a superfluity, 
 but we may and do err in generally defining the former as a 
 little more than we already possess. Riches provide an 
 antidote to their bane, for though they encourage idleness, 
 they will purchase occupation, by change of scene, variety of 
 company, pastimes of all sorts, and by that noblest employ- 
 ment of any, the exercise of beneficence. Robinson Crusoe 
 might despise riches — so may a savage; but no sane and 
 civilised man will hold them in contempt. 
 
 " If you live," says Seneca, "according to the dictates of 
 nature, you will never be poor ; if according to the notions of 
 the world, you will never be rich." 
 
 RIGHTS — and constitutional improvements, are generally 
 the results of a struggle, for no wrong makes a voluntary 
 surrender; it must be met, fought, and conquered. Liberty 
 has seldom been brought into the world without a convul- 
 sion. Treason and rebellion are terrible afflictions, but they 
 gave us Magna Charta in one age, and in another the Con- 
 stitution of 1688. Tyranny and abuse never imitate the 
 well-bred dog, who walks quietly down stairs, just as he sees 
 preparations are making for kicking him down. They wait 
 for the application of the foot, and are kicked twice as far as 
 was first intended. Had the boroughmongers conceded re- 
 presentation to three or four of the large towns, they would 
 not have been all consigned to Schedule A, and smothered 
 in their own rottenness. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 319 
 
 ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.— Horace Walpole 
 in his Letters mentions a sceptical bon-vivant, who, upon 
 being urged to turn Roman Catholic, objected that it was a 
 religion enjoining so many fasts, and requiring such implicit 
 faith : — " You give us," he observed, " too little to eat, and 
 too much to swallow." 
 
 ABBATH, Observance of. — The Americans are 
 before us in sound opinions on this subject. In 
 the report of the House of Representatives upon 
 petitions for the prohibition of the conveyance 
 of the mail on the Sabbath, the proposition is 
 broadly laid down, that questions of religious obligation lie 
 out of the province of legislation. It says, "The principles 
 of our government do not recognise in the majority any 
 authority over the minority, except in matters which regard 
 the conduct of man to his fellow-men." And it defines the 
 duty of the representative " to guard the rights of man — not to 
 restrict the rights of conscience." We here quote the passage. 
 " Religious zeal enlists the strongest prejudices of the 
 human mind, and, when misdirected, excites the worst pas- 
 sions of our nature under the delusive pretext of doing God 
 service. Nothing so infuriates the heart to deeds of rapine 
 and blood. Nothing is so incessant in its toils, so persever- 
 ing in its determinations, so appalling in its course, or so 
 dangerous in its consequences. The equality of rights 
 secured by the constitution may bid defiance to mere political 
 tyrants, but the robe of sanctity too often glitters to deceive. 
 The constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred 
 as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to 
 adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary in- 
 dividual than that of a whole community. That representa- 
 tive who would violate this principle, would lose his delegated 
 
3 2o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 character, and forfeit the confidence of his constituents. 
 If Congress shall declare the first day of the week holy, it 
 will not convince the Jew nor the Sabbatarian. It will dis- 
 satisfy both, and, consequently, convert neither. Human 
 power may extort vain sacrifices, but Deity alone can com- 
 mand the affections of the heart. If Congress shall, by the 
 authority of the law, sanction the measure recommended, it 
 would constitute a legislative decision of a religious contro- 
 versy, on which even Christians themselves are at issue. 
 However suited such a decision may be to an ecclesiastical 
 council, it is incompatible with a republican legislature, which 
 is purely for political, and not religious purposes." 
 
 Josephus records, that when God was determined to 
 punish his chosen people, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who, 
 while they were breaking all his other laws, were scrupulous 
 observers of that one which required them to keep holy the 
 Sabbath-day, he suffered this hypocritical fastidiousness to 
 become their ruin; for Pompey, knowing that they obsti- 
 nately refused even to defend themselves on that day, selected 
 it for a general assault upon the city, which he took by storm, 
 and butchered the inhabitants with as little mercy as he 
 found resistance. 
 
 " Pleasant but wrong," was the naivete of the little urchin, 
 who, on being brought before a magistrate for playing 
 marbles on a Sunday, and sternly asked, — " Do you know, 
 sirrah, where those little boys go to, who are wicked enough 
 to play marbles on a Sunday?" replied very innocently, — 
 " Yes, your vorship, some on 'em goes to the Common, and 
 some on 'em goes down by the river side." 
 
 SACRIFICES — killing and burning the harmless to save 
 the hurtful, so that the less innocent men become, the more 
 they destroy innocent animals. What must have been 
 Solomon's opinion of his own sins, and those of his people, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 321 
 
 when, at the consecration of the temple, he offered a sacrifice 
 of 22,000 oxen, and 120,000 sheep ! — Ovid was clear-sighted 
 enough to see the folly of the heathen system of sacrifice, 
 and there is a remarkable conformity between his — 
 
 " Non bove mactato coelestia numina gaudent, 
 Sed quae praestanda est, et sine teste, fide" — 
 
 and sundry passages in the New Testament. The priest- 
 hood made no very heavy sacrifice when they gave up their 
 share of slaughtered animals for tithes, offerings, and other 
 pecuniary oblations. 
 
 SANCTUARY — the abuse of impunity, arising originally 
 from the abuse of legal severity ; — two evils aggravating, in 
 the endeavour to correct, each other. All local privileges, 
 the remnants of this ancient compromise, should be abolished. 
 We need no other sanctuary than mild laws impartially ad- 
 ministered. The king being the first magistrate of the State, 
 and, as head of the Church, the guardian of the public 
 morals, why should the verge of his court enable debtors to 
 defy their just creditors, and to defraud honest tradesmen 
 with impunity? Why should Peers, or Members of '.he 
 House of Commons, perverting their honour into a source of 
 dishonour, violate the laws which themselves have made, j n J 
 set themselves above pecuniary responsibility by theii in - 
 dom from arrest ? How these privileges have been abused, 
 is well known : — why they should be still retained, is by no 
 means so manifest. 
 
 SATIRE — a glass in which the beholder sees everybody's 
 face but his own. 
 
 SAW — a sort of dumb alderman which gets through a 
 great deal by the activity of its teeth. — N.B. A bona-fido 
 
 Y 
 
3 22 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 alderman is not one of the " wise saws " mentioned by 
 Shakspeare, at least in " modern instances." 
 
 SCANDAL — what one half the world takes a pleasure in 
 inventing, and the other half in believing. 
 
 SCANDALOUS REPORTS — says Boerhaave, are 
 sparks, which, if you do not blow them, will go out of 
 themselves. They have, perhaps, been better compared to 
 volcanic explosions, of which the lighter portions are dis- 
 persed by the winds, while the heavier fall back into the 
 mouth whence they were ejected. Our scandalous journals, 
 professedly dealing in personality and abuse, have been 
 justly termed the opprobrium of the age ; but it is some con- 
 solation to know, that few or none of them have disgraced 
 the liberal cause. The Conservatives have all the discredit 
 of their support; the Reformers, all the honour of their 
 enmity. Nuisances as they are, it is, perhaps, wise not to 
 molest them, but to let them die of their own stench. Pro- 
 secutions for libel avail little against men of straw, and as to 
 personal chastisement, the rogues — 
 
 ' ' Have all been beaten till they know, 
 What wood the cudgel's of by the blow ; 
 Or kick'd, until they can tell whether 
 A shoe be Spanish or neat leather." 
 
 SCEPTICISM.— "The dogmatist," says Watts, "is sure 
 of everything, and the sceptic believes nothing." Both are 
 likely to be wrong, but we need not impute wrong motives 
 to either. Scepticism may be assumed as an excuse for 
 immorality : but Faith also may be assumed as a substitute 
 for good works. To say that the doubters are all profligates, 
 and the orthodox all hypocrites, would be equally removed 
 from truth and liberality. As the worldly temptations all 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 323 
 
 lean towards an acquiescence in received opinions, those 
 who profess them should be the last to suspect the motives 
 of those who differ from them. Both may be good Christians, 
 if they will but think each other to be such. 
 
 SCHISM.—" The restraining of the Word of God, and 
 the understanding of men, from that liberty wherein Christ 
 and the Apostles left them, is, and hath been, the only 
 fountain of all the schisms of the Church, and that which 
 makes them immortal ; — the common incendiary of Chris- 
 tendom, and that which tears in pieces, not the coat, but 
 the bowels and members of Christ, Ridente Turca nee 
 dolente Judceo? — (Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants,* 
 pt. i. p. 152.) 
 
 SCHOOLS. — It may be questioned whether the separa- 
 tion of brothers and sisters from each other, and of both 
 from their parents, by sending them to school, be not in- 
 jurious to domestic morals, and therefore hurtful to all 
 parties. That scholars may derive many advantages from 
 attending public or private institutions cannot be denied; 
 but their residence should be at home, for such would seem 
 to be the intention of nature ; and the constant intercourse 
 of parents and children cannot be otherwise than mutually 
 beneficial. Men should be fathers of their sons' minds as 
 well as bodies. Whatever a youth may lose in the classics, 
 by being educated altogether at home, he will gain in 
 morality, and the family affections ; while he will pick up, 
 by what may be termed insensible education, more general 
 knowledge than will be generally possessed by an Etonian 
 or Harrow boy of twice his age. Latin and Greek are worth 
 having, but not if they cost more than their value. The 
 licentious intrigues of heathen gods, and the loose morality 
 of Pagan writers, are not the safest reading at that period 
 
 T 2 
 
3 2 4 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of life, when evil impressions are the most easily made, and 
 the most difficult to eradicate. What is the value of mere 
 scholarship ? There ought to be a satisfactory answer to 
 this question, for a whole life is often given for its acquire- 
 ment. And after all, it is not the knowledge locked up in the 
 learned languages; it is not the treasure, but the casket; 
 not the nut, but the shell, upon which our classical students 
 crack their critical teeth. Bowing down to the shrine, not to 
 the divinity, what wonder that we so rarely hear of a learned 
 Theban or senior wrangler after he quits his monkish Alma 
 Mater. He knows nothing, does nothing, thinks of nothing, 
 by which the world may be benefited or enlightened. Mo- 
 dern History — the British Constitution — Political Economy 
 — General Science, have formed but a small part of his 
 education, for they are not noticed by the commentators, 
 either upon Lycophron's Cassandra, or the Prometheus 
 Vinctus. If only one half of the time lavished upon the 
 dead languages had been devoted to philosophical re- 
 searches, many a scholar, who is now forgotten, might have 
 left behind him an imperishable name. Since the days of 
 the illustrious Robert Boyle, few of our patricians have dis- 
 tinguished themselves in the higher sciences, or as experi- 
 mental philosophers. Boyle, it must be confessed, had an 
 advantage — he was never at college; no more were Newton, 
 Maclaurin, Wallis, Simson, Napier; nor, in our own more 
 immediate times, Sir Humphry Davy, and some of our 
 most eminent philosophers. 
 
 SCHOOLMASTER— a dealer in boys and birch;— often 
 an academical tyrant, who in his utter ignorance of proper 
 management, renders his victims intractable by maltreat- 
 ment, and then treats them worse for being intractable. 
 Cudgel a little jackass as often as you will, and if he sur- 
 vives your cruelty, he will only end with being a great jackass. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 325 
 
 Many of our pedagogues, ever ready to apply the birch and 
 the ferula, make no allowance for natural deficiency of 
 talent, while they will often terrify a lad of good abilities, 
 but weak nerves, into an asinine stupidity. The boys from 
 whom they gather their harvest, they seem to consider as so 
 much corn, which must be threshed and knocked about the 
 ears before any grains of sense can be extracted ; or perhaps 
 they liken them to walnut trees, which shower down their 
 fruit in return for being well beaten. " The schoolmaster's 
 joy is to flog," says Swift ; since when a hundred years have 
 elapsed, and it still remains the favourite pastime of our 
 pedagogues, who seem to think that boys, as well as sylla- 
 bubs, are to be raised by flogging. Ships and fishes may 
 make their way when steered by the tail; but when we 
 attempt to guide or impel youngsters by a similar process, 
 we only retard or turn them out of their right line. Flagel- 
 lation, whether of pupils or of soldiers, invariably hardens 
 and depraves those whom it seeks to reclaim. In nothing is 
 a thorough reform so much wanted as in some of our old- 
 fashioned seminaries and teachers. 
 
 An empty-headed youth once boasted that he had been 
 to two of the most celebrated schools in England. " Sir," 
 said a bystander, " you remind me of the calf that sucked 
 two cows." " And what was the consequence ? " " Why, 
 sir, he was a very great calf." 
 
 SCIENCE — presents this advantage to its cultivator, that 
 he may always hope for progression, whereas the arts, at 
 least the ornamental ones, move in a perpetual Round 
 Robin, the demand for novelty constantly requiring that 
 even the most faultless perfection should be superseded by 
 something new, which, of necessity, must be something 
 inferior. Were Phidias, Vitruvius, and Raphael to revive,, 
 they would find that the world has retrograded in statuary, 
 
326 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 architecture, and painting; — but could Leibnitz or Newton 
 revisit us, they would be amazed at our advances in mathe- 
 matics and general science. 
 
 SCOTCHMEN — the inhabitants of every country except 
 their own. "No wonder," says Dean Lockier, " that we 
 meet with so many clever Scotchmen, for every man of that 
 country, who has any sense, leaves it as fast as he can." 
 
 SCOTT, Sir Walter. — Twenty-two bad poets have already 
 written epitaphs upon this celebrated author. What a gain 
 would it be to the world if Sir Walter were now writing 
 theirs ! 
 
 SCULPTURE — the noble art of making an imperishable 
 portrait in marble or bronze. There are various ways of 
 contemplating these exquisite productions of genius. We 
 may be delighted by the beauty of a statue, amazed by the 
 triumph of manual dexterity which it exhibits, or we may 
 be interested in its associations with the past or the future. 
 Or there is a Utilitarian and economical way of consider- 
 ing the matter, which was well illustrated by two artisans, 
 when Chantry's bronze statue of George the Fourth was first 
 exhibited, " What a lot o' penny pieces all this here copper 
 would have made," observed one. — "Ay, never mind, Jack!" 
 said his companion, pointing at the figure — " it will cost a 
 deal less to keep he, than it does to keep the live un ! " 
 
 A contemporary writer has asked, why we attach so little 
 value to the wax figures in the perfumers' shops, which 
 approach much nearer to nature than the most elaborate 
 marble bust ; but he must have forgotten that all works of 
 art are estimated in the mingled ratio of their difficulty, 
 utility, and permanence, not by their mere similitude to the 
 object imitated. — " You would not value the finest head cut 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 327 
 
 out upon a carrot," said Dr. Johnson. Here he was right, 
 but he was wrong when he added that the value of statuary 
 was solely owing to its difficulty ; for its durability, we might 
 almost say its perpetuity, gives it an immeasurable advantage 
 over a perishable painting. 
 
 SEA, The — three-fourths of what we might call the earth ; 
 the dwelling-place of whales, walruses, porpoises, seals, sailors; 
 and other monsters. 
 
 Strange that we often lose our way in travelling by land, 
 where we have only to follow our nose, pursue the high 
 roads chalked out for us, and read the sign posts set up for 
 our guidance; while in traversing the pathless deep, with 
 none to ask, and no sea-marks to direct, with nothing to 
 peruse but the blank main and the illegible sky, a vessel 
 seldom fails, however long and remote may be her voyage, to 
 steer direct into her destined harbour. This is the proudest 
 victory of science; the greatest triumph of man over the 
 elements. The little round compass is the ring that marries 
 the most distant nations to each other. Commerce is the 
 parent of civilisation; the coasts and ports of a country 
 will be always found more polished than the inland parts. 
 The sea, therefore, shall ever receive the homage of my 
 profound respect, but I cannot admire it. Hunt has justly 
 denned it as a great monotonous idea. So little do I like it, 
 that I care not to dwell upon it, even with my pen. 
 
 SECRETS. — A secret is like silence — you cannot talk 
 about it, and keep it ; it is like money — when once you know 
 there is any concealed, it is half discovered. — " My dear 
 Murphy ! " said an Irishman to his friend, " why did you 
 betray the secret I told you?" — " Is it betraying you call it? 
 Sure, when I found I wasn't able to keep it myself, didn't I 
 do well to tell it to somebody that could ? " 
 
328 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 SECTS — different clans of religionists, the very variety 
 and number of which should inculcate mutual respect and 
 toleration, instead of hatred, and that odious self-worship, 
 which many people imagine to be worship of the Creator. — 
 
 Embracing those whom Europe holds, 
 The Christian catalogue unfolds 
 
 About a hundred different sects, 
 And due indulgence it should teach 
 To every follower of each ; 
 
 If for a moment he reflects, 
 The chances are against his own, 
 Just as one hundred are to one. 
 
 SELF-LOVE — thinking the most highly of the individual 
 that least deserves our regard. The self-love of most men 
 consists in pleasing themselves, but there are some cases 
 where it displays itself in pleasing others. In neither is it 
 altogether to be condemned, for our sensibilities may be too 
 weak, as well as too strong, and they who feel little for 
 themselves, will feel little or not at all for others. Nothing 
 can be more different than fortitude and insensibility; the 
 one being a noble principle, the other a mere negation ; and 
 yet they are often confounded. 
 
 SERMONS— sometimes theological opiates — sometimes 
 religious discourses, attended by many who do not attend 
 to them, and when published, purchased by many who do 
 not read them. It is in vain to expect much eloquence or 
 originality in these productions ; — first, because most clergy- 
 men have a horror of novelty, lest it should be deemed 
 unorthodox : and, secondly, because they want all motive 
 for the bold and full development of their talents. Tc 
 rise above the regular routine of the pulpit, will neither 
 improve their present position, nor add to their chances of 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES, 329 
 
 future, preferment ; for the ruling church powers, jealous of 
 all enthusiasts, and still more so of original thinkers, had 
 much rather promote a weak respectable man, who will sub- 
 mit to be led, than a strong-minded zealous divine who might 
 aspire to lead — and, perhaps, to innovate ! 
 
 " How comes it," demanded a clergyman of Garrick — 
 "that I, in expounding divine doctrines, produce so little 
 effect upon my congregation, while you can so easily arouse 
 the passions of your auditors by the representation of 
 fiction ? " The answer was short and pithy. — " Because I 
 recite falsehoods as if they were true, while you deliver 
 truths as if they were false." 
 
 SERVANTS — liveried deputies, upon whose tag-rag-and- 
 bobtail shoulders we wear our own pride and ostentation; 
 household sinecurists, who invariably do the less, the less they 
 have to do ; domestic drones, who are often the plagues, and 
 not seldom the masters of their masters. Many who have'now 
 become too grand for grand liveries, and will not shoulder 
 the shoulder-knot, are only to be distinguished from those 
 whom they serve by their better looks and figures, and more 
 magisterial air. Let no man expect to be well attended in 
 a large establishment ; where there are many waiters, the 
 master is generally the longest waiter. A Grand Prior of 
 France, once abusing Palapret for beating his lackey, he 
 replied in a rage — " Zooks, Sir, he deserves it ; I have but 
 this one, and yet I am every bit as badly served as you who 
 have twenty." 
 
 SET-DOWN. — That species of rebuke familiarly termed 
 a set-down, when it has been merited by the offending party, 
 and is inflicted without an undue severity, is generally very 
 acceptable to every one but its object. An empty coxcomb,, 
 after having engrossed the attention of the company for 
 
33o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 some time with himself and his petty ailments, observed to 
 Dr. Parr, that he could never go out without catching cold 
 in his head. "No wonder," cried the doctor, pettishly, "you 
 always go out without anything in it." Another of the same 
 stamp, who imagined himself to be a poet, once said to 
 Nat. Lee, "Is it not easy to write like a madman, as you 
 do?" "No; but it is very easy to write like a fool, as 
 you do." 
 
 SETTLER.— Tom Hood, in one of his delightful Comic 
 Annuals, has an engraving of a colonist meeting a settler 
 in the form of an infuriated lion, who with bristling mane 
 seems prepared to give the stranger a passport down his 
 throat. We may encounter a less formidable, but equally 
 conclusive settler, without stirring from our own fire-sides, 
 and afford a proof at the same time, that a bad thing put 
 into the mouth will sometimes bring a good thing out of 
 it. — An epicure, while eating oysters, swallowed one that 
 was not fresh. " Zounds, waiter ! " he ejaculated, making 
 a wry face, " what sort of an oyster do you call this ? " 
 " A native, Sir," replied the wielder of the knife. " A native ! 
 «— / call it a settler, so you need not open any more. — 
 What's to pay ? " 
 
 SHOOTING THE LONG-BOW— stretching a fact till 
 you have made it as long as you want it. Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury s tastes have descended to some of our modern 
 nobility, for he tells us in his Autobiography, "The exercises 
 I chiefly used, and most recommended to my posterity, were, 
 riding the great horse and fencing. I do much approve like- 
 wise of sJiooting in the lo7ig-bow? So does our ingenious 
 
 contemporary, Lord G , who never suffers himself to be 
 
 outstripped in the marvellous. The Marquis of H had 
 
 engaged the attention of a dinner party, by stating that he 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 331 
 
 had caught a pike, the day before, which weighed nineteen 
 
 pounds. " Pooh ! " cried Lord G , " that is nothing to 
 
 the salmon I hooked last week, which weighed fifty-six 
 pounds." " Hang it," whispered the Marquis to his neigh- 
 bour, " I wish I could catch my pike again ; I would add ten 
 pounds to him directly." 
 
 SICKNESS — without reference to the religious impres- 
 sions it is calculated to awaken, is well worth enduring, now 
 and then, not only for the pleasure of convalescence, but 
 that we may learn a due and grateful sense of the blessing of 
 health. "Every recovery," says Jean Paul Richter, "is a 
 palingenesia, and bringing back of our youth, making 
 us love the earth, and those that are on it, with a new 
 love." 
 
 SIDE WIND ATTACK— the not uncommon custom of 
 pelting a friend, after he has left the company, seems to have 
 been derived from the practice of the ancient tribes, who 
 erected a monument to a departed hero, by throwing stones 
 upon him. 
 
 SILENCE — a thing which it is often difficult to keep, in 
 exact proportion as it is dangerous not to keep it. So frail 
 that we cannot even speak of it without breaking it, and yet 
 as easily and as completely to be restored as it was de- 
 stroyed, few people understand the use, or appreciate the 
 value of this mysterious quality. All men when they talk, 
 think that they are conferring pleasure upon others, because 
 they feel it themselves; but none suspect that the same 
 object may sometimes be more effectually obtained by their 
 silence. A good listener is much more rare than a good 
 talker, because the conversation of general society seldom 
 fixes the attention, and thus in the hopelessness of curing 
 
332 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the evil, we aggravate it. " When I go into company," said 
 
 L , " I am compelled to become as great a chatterbox as 
 
 the rest, because I had rather hear my own nonsense than 
 that of other people." " After all," observed his niece one 
 day, when he was twitting her with her loquacity, — " I know 
 many men who talk more than women : " — " Ay," was the 
 reply, " more to the point." 
 
 L was once overturned in a carriage with his niece, 
 
 who, finding after all her screams, that she had received no 
 hurt, asked her uncle how, in such an imminent danger, he 
 could have preserved so perfect a silence. " Because I was 
 tolerably sure that death would not be frightened away by 
 my making a noise." 
 
 Socrates, when a chatterbox applied to him to be taught 
 rhetoric, said that he must pay double the usual price, 
 because it would first be necessary to teach him to hold his 
 tongue. We may be sometimes gainers by practising this 
 difficult art, even at a festive meeting. " Silence," exclaimed 
 an epicure to some noisy guests, " you make so much noise 
 that we don't know what we are eating." 
 
 SILK — the refuse of a reptile, employed to give distinction 
 and dignity to the lord of the creation. Compare the cater- 
 pillar in its cocoon, with the king's counsel in his silk gown, 
 and in adjusting the claims of the rival worms, the palm of 
 ingenuity must be conceded to the former, because it spins 
 and fashions its own covering, whereas the latter can only 
 spin out the thread of empty elocution, and weave a web of 
 sophistry. The Abbe* Raynal calls silk, "Fouvrage de ce ver 
 rampant, qui habille Fhomme de feuilles d^arbres e'laborees 
 dans son sein." Hear how the pompous Gibbon gives the same 
 information. " I need not explain that silk is originally spun 
 from the bowels of a caterpillar, and that it composes the 
 golden tomb, whence a worm emerges in the form of a 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 333 
 
 butterfly." There is an Arabian proverb which conveys the 
 same fact in a much more moral and poetical form. " With 
 patience and perseverance, the leaf of the mulberry tree 
 becomes satin." 
 
 SLANDERER — a person of whom the Greeks showed a 
 due appreciation, when they made the word synonymous 
 with devil. Slanderers are at all events economical, for they 
 make a little scandal go a great way, and rarely open their 
 mouths, except at the expense of other people. We must 
 allow that they have good excuse for being defamatory, if it 
 be their object to bring down others to their own level. It 
 may be further urged in their extenuation, that they are 
 driven to their trade by necessity ; they filch the fair cha- 
 racter of others, because they have none of their own ; and 
 with this advantage, that the stolen property can never be 
 found upon them. There is a defence also for their covert 
 and cowardly mode of attacking you, for how can you expect 
 that backbiters should meet you face to face ? Nay, they 
 have even a valid plea for being so foul-mouthed, considering 
 how often they have been compelled to eat their own words. 
 Hang them ! let us do the fellows justice ! 
 
 SLAVE-DRIVER — a white brute employed to coerce and 
 torture black men. Old Fuller calls Negroes, " images of 
 God carved in ebony." May we not say of their white task- 
 masters, that they are images of the devil carved in ivory. 
 
 SNUFF — dirt thrust up the nostrils with a pig-like snort, 
 as a sternutatory, which is not to be sneezed at. The 
 moment he has thus defeated his own object, the snuffing 
 snuff-taker becomes the slave of a habit, which literally 
 brings his nose to the grindstone ; his Ormskirk has seized 
 him as St. Dunstan did the devil, and if the red hot pincers 
 
334 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 could occasionally start up from the midst of the rappee, few 
 persons would regret their embracing the proboscis of the 
 offender. Lord Stanhope has very exactly calculated that in 
 forty years, two entire years of the snuff-taker's life will be 
 devoted to tickling his nose, and two more to the agreeable 
 processes of blowing and wiping it, with other incidental cir- 
 cumstances. Well would it be if we bestowed half the time 
 in making ourselves agreeable, that we waste in rendering 
 ourselves offensive to our friends. Society takes its revenge 
 by deciding, that no man would thrust dirt into his head, if 
 he had got any thing else in it. 
 
 SOCIETY. — If persons would never meet except when 
 they have something to say, and if they would always sepa- 
 rate when they have exhausted their pleasant or profitable 
 topics, how delightful, but alas ! how evanescent would be 
 our social assemblages. 
 
 SOLDIER — a man machine, so thoroughly deprived of 
 its human portion, that at the breath of another man 
 machine, it will blindly inflict or suffer destruction. Divested 
 of his tinsel trappings, his gold lace, feathers, music, and the 
 glitter of the false glory with which it has been attempted 
 to dazzle the world as to his real state, it is difficult to 
 imagine any thing more humiliating, than the condition of a 
 soldier. 
 
 Nothing so much shows the triumph of opinion and usage 
 over fact, of the conventional over the abstract, as that a 
 profession, apparently so much at variance with all their 
 feelings, should be chosen by gentlemen of independence, 
 humanity, and reflection. Nothing is more redeeming to our 
 common nature than that such men, placed in a sphere so 
 expressly calculated to make them both slavish. and tyranni- 
 cal, should generally preserve their good qualities from con- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 335 
 
 tamination. Few characters so honourable, few gentlemen 
 so courteous, few companions so agreeable as a British 
 officer; but this is not in consequence, but in spite of his 
 being in the army. Why he ever entered it, we presume not 
 to inquire, but we are bound to believe that his motive was 
 not less rational and amiable than that of the affectionate 
 Irishman, who enlisted in the seventy-fifth regiment, in order 
 to be near his brother, who was a corporal in the seventy- 
 sixth. — {Vide Josephus Molitor.) 
 
 SPECULATION — a word that sometimes begins with its 
 second letter. 
 
 SPINSTER — an unprotected female, and of course a fine 
 subject for exercising the courage of cowards, and the wit of 
 the witless. 
 
 STEAM. — Strange that there should slumber in yonder 
 tranquil pond, a power so tremendous, that could we con- 
 dense and direct its energies, it might cleave the solid earth 
 in twain, and yet so gentle that it may be governed, and 
 applied, and set to perform its stupendous miracles by a 
 child ! The discovery that water would resist being boiled 
 above 212 degrees, has conferred upon England its manufac- 
 turing supremacy, and will eventually produce changes, both 
 moral and physical, of which it is difficult to limit the extent. 
 One bushel of coals, properly consumed, will raise seventy 
 millions of pounds weight a foot high. The Menai Bridge, 
 weighing four millions of pounds, suspended at a medium 
 height of 120 feet, might have been raised where it is, by 
 seven bushels of coals. M. Dupin estimates the steam 
 engines of England to possess a moving power equivalent to 
 that of 6,400,000 men at .the windlass. And this stupendous 
 agent is at present only in its infancy I 
 
336 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 STOMACH — the epicure's deity. Buffon gave it as his 
 deliberate conviction, that this portion of our economy was 
 the seat of thought, an opinion which he seems to have 
 adopted from Persius, who dubs it a master of arts, and the 
 dispenser of genius. So satisfied are we of its reflecting dis- 
 position, that we call a cow, or other beast with two stomachs, 
 a ruminating animal par excellence. To judge by the 
 quantity they eat, we might infer some of our own species to 
 have two stomachs ; but when we listen to their discourse, 
 we find it difficult to include them in the class of ruminating 
 animals. 
 
 STONE, The Philosopher's — the folly of those who have 
 inherited Midas's ears without his touch. A will-o'-the-wisp, 
 however, does not always lead us into quagmires ; in running 
 after shadows we sometimes catch substances, and in fol- 
 lowing illusions overtake the most valuable realities. The 
 pursuit of the philosopher's stone has by no means been a 
 vain one. Alchymy has given us chymistry, and we are in- 
 debted to the astrologers for the elucidations of the most 
 difficult problems in astronomy. The clown, who in running 
 to catch a fallen star, stumbled, and kicked up a hidden 
 treasure, has found many an unintentional imitator among 
 scientific visionaries and stargazers. Perhaps more has been 
 gained by long and vainly seeking the quadrature of the 
 circle, the longitude, and perpetual motion, than would have 
 arisen from immediate success. Morals, too, have their 
 philosopher's stone, in other shapes than those of Plato's 
 Atlantis, or More's Utopia; and it is healthy to chase such 
 chimeras, if it were only for the sake of air and exercise, in 
 an atmosphere of purity. Many real virtues may be acquired 
 by straining after an imaginary and unattainable perfection. 
 Crede quod /tabes, et habes. When a thing is once believed 
 possible, it is half realized. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 337 
 
 STONE to pelt with. — Dr. Magee affirms, that the 
 Roman Catholics have a Church without a religion; — the 
 Dissenters, a religion without a Church ; — the Establishment, 
 both a Church and a religion. " This is false," observes 
 Robert Hall of Leicester; "but it is an excellent stone for a 
 clergyman to pelt with." 
 
 STUPIDITY — is often more apparent than real; it may 
 be indisposition rather than incapacity. The human mind 
 is not like logic — the major does not always contain the 
 minor; and men who feel themselves fit for great things, 
 cannot always accomplish little ones. Claude Lorraine was 
 dismissed by the pastry-cook to whom he had been appren- 
 ticed, for sheer stupidity. The difficulty did not consist in 
 bringing his mind up, but in bringing it down to the manu- 
 facture of buns and tartlets. 
 
 STYLE. — To have a good style in writing, you should 
 have none ; as perfect beauty of face consists in the absence 
 of any predominant feature. Mannerism, whether in writing 
 or painting, can never be a merit. Swift is right when he 
 decides, that " Proper words in proper places, make the true 
 definition of a good style." 
 
 " He who would write well," says Roger Ascham, "must 
 follow the advice of Aristotle, — to speak as the common 
 people speak, and to think as the wise think." Style, how- 
 ever, is but the colouring of the picture, which should 
 always be held subordinate to the design. " We may well 
 forgive Tertullian his iron style," says Balzac, "when we 
 recollect what excellent weapons he has forged out of this 
 iron, for the defence of Christianity, and the defeat of the 
 Marcionites and Valentinians." 
 
 SUBSCRIPTIONS, Private— paying your creditors by 
 
 z 
 
338 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 taxing your friends ; an approved method for getting rid of 
 both. Many years ago a worthy and well-known Baronet, 
 having become embarrassed in his circumstances, a Sub- 
 scription was set on foot by his friends, and a letter, 
 soliciting contributions, was addressed to the late Lord 
 Erskine, who immediately dispatched the following an- 
 swer : — 
 
 " My dear Sir John, 
 " I am in general an enemy to Subscriptions of this nature; 
 first, because my own finances are by no means in a flourish- 
 ing plight ; and secondly, because pecuniary assistance, thus 
 conferred, must be equally painful to the donor and the 
 receiver. As I feel, however, the sincerest gratitude for your 
 public services, and regard for your private worth, I have 
 great pleasure in subscribing — (Here the worthy Baronet, 
 big with expectation, turned over the leaf, and finished the 
 perusal of the note, which terminated as follows) : — in sub- 
 scribing myself, 
 
 " My dear Sir John, 
 
 a Yours very faithfully, 
 
 " Erskine." 
 
 SUGGESTION, A friendly.— A man who had had his 
 ears cuffed in a squabble, without resenting the affront, 
 being shortly afterwards in a party, and in want of a pinch 
 of snuff, exclaimed, " I cannot think what I have done with 
 my box ; it is not in either of my pockets." — " Try your ears," 
 said a bystander. 
 
 SUPERSTITION,— as Plutarch has well observed, is 
 much worse than atheism, since it must be less offensive to 
 deny the existence of such a deity as Saturn, than to admit 
 his existence, and affirm, that he was such an unnatural mon- 
 ster, as even to devour his own children. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 339 
 
 Archbishop Tillotson says, " According as men's notions 
 of God are, such will their religions be ; if they have gross 
 and false conceptions of God, their religion will be absurd 
 and superstitious. If men fancy God to be an ill-natured 
 Being, armed with infinite power, who takes delight in the 
 misery and ruin of his creatures, and is ready to take all 
 advantages against them, they may fear him, but they will 
 hate him, and they will be apt to be such towards one an- 
 other, as they fancy God to be toward them ; for all religion 
 doth naturally incline men to imitate him whom they wor- 
 ship." — Sermons, vol. i. p. 181. 
 
 " Atheism," observes a Christian philosopher, " leaves a 
 man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to 
 reputation ; all which may be guides to an. outward moral 
 virtue, though religion were not ; but superstition dismounts 
 all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of 
 men." — (Bacon's Essays, p. 96.) In point of fact, the mis- 
 representation of a deity, leads immediately to the denial of 
 his existence; a result which has not escaped the acuteness 
 oi Plutarch. " The atheist," says that writer, " contributes 
 not in the least to superstition; but superstition, having given 
 out so hideous an idea of the Deity, has frightened many 
 into the utter disbelief of any such being ; because, they 
 think it much better, nay, more reasonable, that there should 
 be no deity, than one whom they see more reason to hate 
 and abominate, than to love, honour, and reverence. Thus 
 inconsiderate men, shocked at the deformity of Superstition, 
 run directly into the opposite extreme of atheism, heedlessly 
 skipping over true piety, which is the golden mean between 
 both." 
 
 How certainly should we avoid the degrading superstition 
 of demonism, did we but act upon the following position of 
 Archbishop Tillotson: — " Every good man is, in some degree, 
 partaker of the divine nature, and feels that in himself, which 
 
 z 2 
 
34o THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 he conceives to be in God ; so that this man does experience 
 what others do but talk of; — he sees the image of God in 
 himself, and is able to discourse of him from an inward 
 sense and feeling of his excellency." — {Sermons, vol. iii. p. 
 42.) If we thus behold the Deity reflected in our own hearts, 
 no wonder that the religion of the good man should be 
 rational and cheerful, and that of the bad man superstitious 
 and gloomy. How forcibly does the latter recall the passage 
 in Bacon's noble essay — " Of Unity in Religion," where he 
 says — " It was a great blasphemy when the devil said, ' I will 
 ascend, and be like the Highest;' but it is greater blasphemy 
 to personate God, and bring him in, saying — ' I will descend, 
 and be like the Prince of Darkness.' Surely this is to bring 
 down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of a dove, in 
 the shape of a vulture, or raven; and to set out of the bark 
 of the Christian Church a flag" of a bark of pirates and 
 
 SUPPER — a receipt for indigestion, and a sleepless 
 night. A Spanish proverb says — A little in the morning 
 is enough ; enough at dinner is but little ; a little at night 
 is too much. This agrees pretty nearly with the Latin 
 dictum — 
 
 Pone gulae metas, ut sit tibi longior Betas, 
 Esse cupis sanus ? — Sit tibi parca manus. 
 
 SYMPATHY — a sensibility, of which its objects are 
 sometimes insensible. It may be perilous to discourage a 
 feeling, whereof there is no great superabundance in this 
 selfish and hard-hearted world ; but even of the little that 
 exists, a portion is frequently thrown away. Such is the 
 power of adaptation in the human mind, that those who 
 seem to be in the most pitiable plight, have often the least 
 occasion for our pity. A city damsel, whose ideas had been 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 341 
 
 Arcadianised by the perusal of pastorals, having once made 
 an excursion to a distance of twenty miles from London, 
 wandered into the fields in the hope of discovering a bond 
 fide live shepherd. To her infinite delight, she at length en- 
 countered one, under a hawthorn hedge in full blossom, with 
 his dog by his side, his crook in his hand, and his sheep 
 round about him, just as if he were sitting to be modelled in 
 china for a chimney ornament. To be sure, he did not 
 exhibit the azure jacket, jessamine vest, pink tiffany inexpres- 
 sibles, peach-coloured stockings, and golden buckles of those 
 faithful portraitures. This was mortifying; still more so, 
 that he was neither particularly young nor cleanly ; but, most 
 of all, that he wanted the indispensable accompaniment of a 
 pastoral reed, in order that he might beguile his solitude 
 with the charms of music. Touched with pity at this priva- 
 tion, and lapsing, unconsciously, into poetical language, the 
 civic damsel exclaimed — " Ah ! gentle shepherd, tell me 
 where's your pipe?" — " I left it at home, Miss," replied the 
 clown, scratching his head, " cause I ha'nt got no baccy." 
 
 A benevolent committee-man of the Society for super- 
 seding the necessity of climbing boys, seeing a sooty urchin 
 weeping bitterly, at the corner of a street, asked him the 
 cause of his distress ; — " Master has been using me shame- 
 fully," sobbed the sable sufferer; — " he has been letting Jem 
 Hudson go up the chimney at No. 9, when it was my turn ! 
 He said it was too high, and too dangerous for me, but I'll 
 go up a chimney with Jem Hudson any day in the year; 
 that's what I will ! " 
 
 There is a local sympathy, however, in which we cannot 
 well be mistaken, and which it is lamentable not to possess ; 
 for that man — to use the words of Dr. Johnson — " is little 
 to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the 
 plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer 
 among the ruins of Iona." 
 
34 2 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 Even the most obdurate and perverse natures cannot 
 always resist the power of sympathy. Indecorous as it is, 
 we must quote Lord Peterborough's observation on the 
 celebrated Fene'lon ; — "He is a delicious creature; I was 
 forced to get away from him as fast as I possibly could, else 
 he would have made me pious." As a profane man may be 
 pleased with piety, so may a wise one be occasionally 
 pleased with folly, through sympathy with the pleasures of 
 others. 
 
 Most misplaced and mischievous of all, is that spurious 
 sympathy, by which some of our journalists and novel 
 writers seek to enlist our feelings in the cause of the 
 basest malefactors. — " To make criminals the object of a 
 sentimental admiration, and of a sort of familiar attach- 
 ment ; to hold up as a hero the treacherous murderer, 
 whose life has been passed in reckless profligacy, merely 
 because, at his death, he displays a firmness which scarcely 
 ever deserts the vilest, is a task as unworthy of literary 
 talents, as it is unfit for cultivated and liberal minds." — 
 Ed. Review ', vol. xl. p. 202. 
 
 ALE NT. — What we want in natural abilities 
 may generally and easily be made up in in- 
 dustry ; as a dwarf may keep pace with a giant, 
 if he will but move his legs a little faster. 
 " Mother !" said the Spartan boy, going to 
 
 battle, "my sword is too short." — "Add a step to it," was 
 
 the reply. 
 
 TALKERS, Great— not only do the least, but generally 
 say the least, if their words be weighed, instead of reckoned. 
 He who labours under an incontinence of speech, seldom 
 gets the better of his complaint; for he must prescribe for 
 
. OR, HEADS AND TALES. 343 
 
 himself, and is sure of having a fool for his physician. How 
 many a chatterbox might pass for a wiseacre, if he could 
 keep his own secret, and put a drag chain, now and then, 
 upon his tongue. The largest minds have the smallest 
 opinion of themselves ; for their knowledge impresses them 
 with humility, by showing the extent of their ignorance, and 
 this discovery makes them taciturn. Deep waters are still ; 
 wise men generally talk little, because they think much : 
 feeling the annoyance of idle loquacity in others, they 
 are cautious of falling into' the same error, and keep 
 their mouths shut, when they cannot open them to the 
 purpose. 
 
 Small wits, on the contrary, are usually great talkers. 
 Uttering whatever comes uppermost, and everything being 
 superficial, their shallowness makes them noisy, and their 
 confidence offensive. If we might perpetrate, at the same time r 
 a pun and paradox, we should affirm, that the smaller the 
 calibre of the mind, the greater the bore of a perpetually open 
 mouth. Human heads are like hogsheads — the emptier they 
 are, the louder report they give of themselves. The chatterbox, 
 according to the Italians, " ftarla prima e fiensa fioij" but 
 we have specimens in this country, who never think, either 
 before or after. The clack of their word-mill is heard even 
 when there is no wind to set it going, and no grist to come 
 from it. 
 
 M. de Bautre', being in the antechamber of Cardinal Riche- 
 lieu, at the time that a great talker was loudly and incessantly 
 babbling, begged him to be silent, lest he should annoy the 
 Cardinal. — " Why do you wish me not to speak ? " asked the 
 chatterbox ;— " I talk a good deal, but I talk well." — " Half 
 
 TASTE — a quick and just perception of beauty and de- 
 formity in the works of nature and art. 
 
344 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 TAVERN — a house kept for those who are not house- 
 keepers. 
 
 TEST ACTS — devices for letting in the unscrupulous 
 and irreligious, and for excluding the conscientious and the 
 pious. All churches have had them, and all have found them 
 equally inefficacious. Requiring a man to receive the Sacra- 
 ment, and thus profane a sacred ordinance, as a qualification 
 for the proper discharge of a civil office, is about as germane 
 to the matter, as if you were to stipulate that your dairymaid 
 should go through the process of being vaccinated, as a 
 security for her making good butter, and never attempting to 
 injure your cow. 
 
 They who imagine that a particular form of test, because 
 it succeeds perfectly well in one instance, must be equally 
 efficacious in all, without reference to the circumstances of 
 the case, or the materials upon which the experiment is to 
 be made, fall into the same mistake as the simple country 
 girl, who, having seen a laundress spit upon a flat iron, to 
 ascertain whether it were too hot, spat in her smoking por- 
 ridge, to see whether it would burn her mouth. 
 
 TEXT, Scriptural — a fertile source of delusion and 
 bigotry to those particularly clear-sighted people, who 
 prefer the letter which killeth, to the spirit which giveth 
 life. 
 
 From drugs intended to impart 
 
 Relief to sickness, care, and pain, 
 The chymist, with transmutive art, 
 
 Extracts a poison and a bane. 
 So does the bigot's art abuse 
 
 The sacred page of love and life, 
 And turn its sweet and hallowed use 
 
 To deadly bitterness and strife. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 345 
 
 As purblind or short-sighted elves 
 Measure their glasses by themselves, 
 And deem those spectacles most true 
 Which suit their own distorted view, 
 So every weak, fanatic creature 
 Makes of himself a Bible-meter ; 
 Chooses those portions of the word 
 Which with his blindness best accord, 
 And closes up his darkened soul 
 Against the spirit of the whole. 
 
 Learn this, ye flounderers in the traps 
 Of insulated lines and scraps,— 
 Though all the texts of Scripture shoot, 
 
 Like hairs within a horse's tail, 
 From one consolidated root, 
 
 Where beauty, strength, and use prevail, 
 Singly, they're fit, like single hairs, 
 Only for springes, nets, and snares.* 
 
 Teritullian gives the best advice upon this subject when he 
 says — " We ought to interpret Scripture, not by the sound 
 of words, but by the nature of things." — Malo te ad sensum 
 rei, quam ad sonum vocabuli exerceas. 
 
 THEOLOGY, Controversial — is to religion what law is to 
 justice, a science which darkens by its illustrations, and misses 
 its object in its over anxiety to attain it. If truth may be 
 called the sun of religion, controversial theology is assuredly 
 its Will-o'-the-wisp. 
 
 Theology, says Le Clerc, is subject to revolutions as well 
 as empires, but though it has undergone considerable 
 changes, yet the humour of divines is much the same. 
 
 TIME — the vehicle that carries everything into nothing. 
 We talk of spending our time, as if it were so much interest 
 
 * Versified from Dr. Donne. 
 
34 6 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of a perpetual annuity; whereas we are all living upon our 
 capital, and he who wastes a single day, throws away that 
 which can never be recalled or recovered. 
 
 TINDER — a thin rag, such for instance as the dresses of 
 modern females, intended to catch the sparks, raise a flame, 
 and light up a match. 
 
 TITHES — being a remuneration for a particular service, 
 ought not only to be fairly proportioned to the talent and in- 
 dustry of the performer, but to be subject to regulation like 
 any other salary, where the duty is improperly discharged, or 
 altogether omitted. To pretend that tithes are absolute 
 property, is a mere fiction. If they were like an estate, why 
 do men complain of the scandal of pluralities or of simony? 
 Who ever hears of the scandal of possessing three or four 
 estates, or of simoniacal contracts for lands and houses? 
 Except by consent of another, the Tithe-owner has no 
 property whatever, for the landholder, if he please, may 
 refuse to cultivate the soil, and then the former has no in- 
 terest in it, and the assumed property of tithe is pro tempore 
 annihilated. 
 
 That tithes are sacred, and inalienable, is another fiction. 
 If the assertion were true, they would still belong, of right, 
 to the Roman Catholic clergy, from whom Henry VIII. wrested 
 them, with very little form of law. In point of fact, they 
 have repeatedly been made the subject of legislative inter- 
 ference, and from a very early period, as will be seen by the 
 following extract : — 
 
 " William the Conqueror -and his Clergy. — With such 
 enormous riches at their disposal, they became unduly 
 powerful ; and William, jealous of that power, and suspicious 
 of their fidelity, reduced all their lands to the common 
 tenure of knights' service and barony — (equivalent to reduc- 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 347 
 
 ing a freehold to a lease for fourteen years, subject to be 
 renewed at the pleasure of the real owner). The prelates 
 were required to take an oath of fealty, and to do homage to 
 the king, before they could be admitted to their temporalities, 
 and they were also subject to an attendance before the king 
 in his Court Baron, to follow him in all his wars with their 
 knights and quota of soldiers, and to perform all other 
 services incident to feudal tenures. The clergy remonstrated 
 most bitterly against this new revolution, equalled only by 
 the revolution which took place in church property five cen- 
 turies afterwards ; but William, like Henry VIII., was inexor- 
 able, and consigned to prison or banishment all who opposed 
 his will." — From Bailies' History of the Coimty Palatine of 
 Lancaster. 
 
 It is, we believe, upon this tenure, and as feudal barons., 
 that the bishops claim the right of sitting in the House of Peers. 
 
 But tithes have been legally alienated or abolished, though 
 not quite so unceremoniously, since the time of Henry VIII. 
 Waste lands for the purpose of removing the obstacle to 
 their improvement, were exempted by a statute of Ed- 
 ward VI. from all tithe for seven years. Madder, on ac- 
 count of the expense of its cultivation, has been relieved 
 altogether from this payment. In Scotland, as it is well 
 known, tithes were entirely abolished by a very pious 
 monarch, Charles I., who sets forth in the preamble to his 
 famous Decret Arbitral, that it is " expedient for the well- 
 being of the realm, the better providing of kirks and sti- 
 pends, and the establishment of schools and other pious 
 uses, that each proprietor shall have and enjoy his own 
 teind (tithe) ; and therefore decrees that all teinds shall be 
 valued and sold, according to certain rules for making the 
 estimate; which was ratified in Parliament by the act 1633, 
 cap. 17." However sacred, therefore, may be the Church's 
 claims and rights, they have been repeatedly abrogated or 
 
348 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 encroached upon when the common weal required the in- 
 fringement. 
 
 The most eminent and pious men in all ages have been 
 opposed to this mode of supporting the clergy. WiclifT re- 
 peatedly asserts that the spirit of Christianity was wounded 
 by clerical endowments; and that venom was poured into 
 the Church, on the very day which first invested her minis- 
 ters, as such, with the rights of property. Archdeacon Paley, 
 who can hardly be considered unfriendly to the real interests 
 of the Church, says, " Of all institutions adverse to cultiva- 
 tion and improvement, none is so noxious as that of tithes. 
 They are a tax not only upon industry, but upon that industry 
 which feeds mankind, upon that species of exertion which it 
 is the aim of all wise laws to cherish and promote." 
 
 When any attempt is made to correct the evils of this 
 impolitic and vexatious impost, without injury to existing 
 rights, a cry of robbery and sacrilege is incontinently raised 
 by the very pastors who value their flocks, as if they were 
 Merino sheep, solely for the sake of the fleece. And after 
 all, who have been such unblushing alienators, not to say 
 usurpers of tithe, as the clergy themselves ? Originally, as 
 Southey admits in his Book of the Church, c. vi., " the 
 whole was received into a common fund, for the fourfold 
 purpose of supporting the clergy, repairing the church, re- 
 lieving the poor, and entertaining the pilgrim and stranger." 
 Who are the parties that have perverted this fund from its 
 original pious uses, and turned it all into their own pockets ? 
 If the clergy were not the first instigators of this abuse, they 
 are at all events the greatest gainers by it, not seeming ever 
 to have thought of their Master's injunction — " Freely ye 
 have received, freely give." (Matthew, ch. x. v. 8.) 
 
 The opinion that every man should be allowed, not only 
 to choose his own religion, but to contribute as he thinks 
 proper towards the support of the pastor, whose duties he 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 349 
 
 exacts, has been maintained by Dr. Adam Smith, as well as 
 other enlightened and devout philosophers, and has been 
 successfully carried into practice by a vast empire — the 
 United States of America. To plead that the voluntary 
 system in England would not adequately support the 
 Church, is to give up the Church, by admitting that it 
 has no hold upon the affections of the people ; and that 
 the Catholics and Dissenters have so much more zeal in 
 the cause of religion, as to contribute both to the established 
 system and their own, while the Episcopalians would not 
 even maintain one priesthood, except upon compulsion. A 
 spiritual institution, which, after so many centuries of power 
 and wealth, would immediately fall to the ground, unless 
 propped up by force of law, is surely self-condemned. 
 
 To render tithes at all consistent with policy and justice, 
 they should only be imposed to support the religion of the 
 great majority of the people. Where the contrary is the 
 case, as is signally exemplified in Ireland, such an impost is 
 an oppression so unwarrantable and irritating, that we can 
 little wonder at the national misery and disturbance of 
 which it has been the fruitful source. In no way, however, 
 are the existing Clergy answerable for the present mis- 
 chievous system of tithe, either in England or Ireland. 
 They have found, not made it, and are entitled to a just 
 and liberal compensation for any rights that they may 
 surrender. But for Heaven's sake — or if this plea have 
 lost its efficacy — for the sake of earth, and its peace and 
 prosperity, let us have some quick composition for these 
 blood-stained tithes, at least in Ireland. When assailed by 
 the legislature, it is to be hoped that they will not receive 
 the same supernatural support once experienced in France, 
 the annals of which country assure us that in the year 793, 
 the ears of corn were all void of substance, and demons 
 were heard in the air, proclaiming that they had ravaged 
 
350 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the harvests, in order to avenge the clergy, for the reluctance 
 of the people to the payment of tithes ! — St. Foix, who 
 relates this story, asks, " how did the devils come to interest 
 themselves so warmly in behalf of the priesthood ? " 
 
 It is maintained by some, that in England the tithes are 
 no hardship, or that they solely affect the landlord : nay, it 
 is affirmed by one writer, that the agricultural interest in 
 general desire their conservation. My friend T. H., who 
 will have his joke, however serious may be the subject, or 
 pitiful the pun it elicits, — asserts, that the burthen of this 
 impost falls upon the farmer, and that if he be really in 
 favour of the tithe, it must be for the same reason that the 
 Mahometan respects Mecca — because it is the burial-place 
 of his prophet. 
 
 TITLES of BOOKS — decoys to catch purchasers. 
 There can be no doubt that a happy name to a book is 
 like an agreeable appearance to a man; but if in either 
 case the final do not answer to the first impression, will 
 not our disappointment add to the severity of our judg- 
 ment ? " Let me succeed with my first impression," the 
 bibliopolist will cry, " and I ask no more. The public 
 are welcome to end with condemning, if they will only 
 begin with buying. Most readers, like the Tuft-hunters 
 at college, are caught by titles." How inconsistent are 
 our notions of morality ! No man of honour would open 
 a letter that was not addressed to him, though he will 
 not scruple to open a book under the same circumstances- 
 Colton's " Lacon," has gone through thirteen editions, and 
 yet it is addressed "TO THOSE WHO think." Had the 
 author substituted for these words "those who think they 
 are thinking," it might not have had so extensive a sale, 
 although it would have been directed to a much larger class. 
 He has shown address in his address. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 351 
 
 TOLERATION — being wise enough to have no differ- 
 ence with those who differ from us. The mutual rancour 
 of conflicting sects is inversely as their distance from each 
 other; no one hating a Jew or a Pagan half so much as 
 a fellow-Christian, who agrees with him in all but one 
 unimportant point. 
 
 If a Hindoo or Mahometan philosopher were to con- 
 template five hundred different sects of Christians, spitting 
 fire and eternal perdition at each other, in flagrant defiance 
 of the very Scriptures which they profess to teach and obey, 
 would he not be tempted to exclaim — " Unhappy men ! ye 
 are all likely to be equally right in your denunciations, for 
 when ye condemn each other, ye condemn yourselves ! " 
 
 Fain would the bard on all impress 
 
 The hatred of intolerance, 
 Teach them their fellow men to bless, 
 
 Whatever doctrines they advance, 
 Bid every fierce contending sect 
 Humble its passions, and reflect, 
 That real Christians love the souls 
 
 Of those by whom their own are doom'd, 
 As frankincense perfumes the coals 
 
 By which it is itself consumed. 
 
 TOMB— a house built for a skeleton: — a dwelling of 
 sculptured marble, provided for dust and corruption : — 
 a monument set up to perpetuate the memory of — the 
 forgotten. 
 
 TONGUE — the mysterious membrane that turns thought 
 into sound. Drink is its oil — eating its drag- chain. 
 
 TRAGEDY — is preferred to comedy — (unless it be the 
 comedie larmoyantej) — and novels with a distressing con- 
 clusion, to those which end happily, because they occasion 
 
352 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 a greater excitement. By nature, we are all more acutely 
 sensible of pain than pleasure, and can therefore sympathize 
 more intensely with the former than the latter. All persons 
 like strong sensations, and the novel-reading world in parti- 
 cular, consisting mostly of male or female idlers of the 
 better class, little conversant with real miseries, fly for a 
 relief from the monotony and mental stagnation of tranquil 
 life, to the stimulus of fictitious distress. Their sympathy 
 with imaginary happiness is too tame to deserve the name 
 of an emotion. 
 
 TRIALS — moral ballast, that often prevents our capsizing. 
 Where we have much to carry, God rarely fails to fit the 
 back to the burthen; where we have nothing to bear, we 
 can seldom bear ourselves. The burthened vessel may be 
 slow in reaching the destined port ; but the vessel without 
 ballast becomes so completely the sport of the winds and 
 waves, that there is danger of her not reaching it at all. 
 
 TRIFLES — may be not only tolerated but admired, when 
 we respect the trifler. Little things, it has been said, are 
 only valued when coming from him who can do great things. 
 It has been affirmed that trifles are often more absorbing 
 than matters of importance ; but this can only be true when 
 said of a trifler — of a mean mind pursuing mean objects. 
 Mirabeau maintains that morality in trifles, is always the 
 enemy of morality in things of importance ; a position not 
 less untrue than dangerous; for it is precisely in trivial 
 affairs that a delicate sense of honour and rectitude is most 
 certainly exhibited, as we throw up a feather and not a stone 
 to ascertain the direction of the wind. 
 
 TRUTHS.— Many a truth is like a wolf which we hold by 
 the ears— afraid to let it escape, and yet scarcely able to 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 353 
 
 retain it. And why should we let it go, if it be likely to 
 worry or annoy our neighbour ? To promulgate truth with a 
 malicious intention, is worse than to infringe it with a 
 benevolent one, inasmuch as a pleasant deception is often 
 better than a painful reality. It was a saying of the selfish 
 Fontenelle, that if he held the most important truth, like a 
 bird in his hand, he would rather crush it than let it go. 
 Lessing, the German, on the contrary, found such a delight 
 in the investigation of truth, that he professed his readiness 
 to make over all claim as its discoverer, provided he might 
 still be allowed to pursue it. Nor can we wonder at his 
 holy ardour, for to follow truth to its source, is to stand at 
 the footstool of God. 
 
 GLINESS — an advantageous stimulus to the 
 mind, that it may make up for the deficiencies 
 of the body. Medusa's head was carried by 
 Minerva; and it will generally be found, that 
 as beauty remains satisfied with exterior attrac- 
 tions, plainness strives to recommend itself by interior 
 beauty. Talent and amiability, which are more loveable 
 than mere loveliness, will always impart a charm to their 
 possessor, as the want of them will render even a Venus 
 unattractive. Countenance, or moral beauty, the reflection 
 of the soul, is as superior to superficial comeliness, as mind 
 is to matter. It is a halo, which indicates the mens divinior, 
 and will win worshippers, however unadorned may be the 
 shrine whence it emanates, for she who looks good cannot: 
 fail to be good-looking. 
 
 UMBRELLA — an article which, by the morality of society, 
 you may steal from friend or foe, and which, for the same 
 reason, you should not lend to either. 
 
 A A 
 
354 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 UNIFORMITY, Religious — a chimera, not less unattain- 
 able than identity of taste, or consimilarity of face, form, and 
 stature. And why should we believe that God, being recog- 
 nised as he is, by all nations, should delight in consentaneous- 
 ness as to the mode of worship, when the whole genius of 
 the world, both moral and physical, evinces a design to 
 introduce the greatest possible diversity into every depart- 
 ment of creation ? Varieties of doctrine are but modifica- 
 tions of the moral creation, under the influence of the 
 religious principle. 
 
 The gems of soul that God hath set 
 In frames of silver, gold, and jet, 
 Tinged by their tegument of clay, 
 May shed a varicolour'd ray ; 
 Yet, like the rainbow's motley dyes, 
 Unite, and mingle in the skies. 
 
 Man, like the other plants of earth, 
 Takes form and pressure from his birth ; 
 And since, in various countries, each 
 Prays in a different form of speech, 
 Why may not God delight to view 
 Variety of worship too ; — 
 All to one glorious source address'd, 
 Although in different forms express'd ? 
 The vast orchestra of the earth 
 
 Millions of instruments displays ; 
 But when its countless sounds go forth, 
 
 To hymn the same Creator's praise, 
 The mighty chorus swells on high, 
 In one accepted harmony. 
 
 USURY, Law of — punishing a man for making as much 
 as he can of his money, although he is freely allowed to 
 make as much money as he can. Usury {ab usu ceris) is 
 rent for money, as rent is usury for land. 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 355 
 
 ANITY — like laudanum, and other poisonous 
 medicines, is beneficial in small, though in- 
 jurious in large quantities. No man, who is not 
 pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, 
 can please others ; for it is the belief of his own 
 grace that makes him graceful and gracious. If it be a 
 recommendation to dress our minds to the best advantage, 
 and to render ourselves as agreeable as possible, why should 
 it be an objection to bestow the same pains upon personal 
 appearance ? Dress often influences character ; for the man 
 whose well-regulated mind has a due sense of propriety and 
 fitness, will train himself from the outside inwards, and act 
 up to his externals. Our present uniformity, and plainness 
 of attire, have given a monotony to character, and lowered 
 the general standard of manners. Who can look upon a 
 cloth sleeve and drab trowsers with the elevating feelings 
 inspired by embroidered silk and the dangling sword, which, 
 in determining the rank, conferred, to a certain degree, the 
 sentiments and the demeanour of a gentleman ? When men, 
 too, wore different dresses according to their age, they 
 naturally adapted their deportment and conversation to their 
 attire, which tended still further to produce individual con- 
 sistency, and general variety. As old and young now wear 
 the same habiliments, there is as little difference in their 
 manners as in their coats ; a sameness which cannot be 
 right in one direction, and may be wrong in both. 
 
 VERSE. — There seems to be no peculiar adaptation of 
 the rhythm or verse to the subject, whether grave or gay, 
 which custom and association may not conquer. The 
 French Alexandrine, in which Racine composed his tra- 
 gedies, and Voltaire his Henriade, is the burlesque verse 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 of the English. Compare the following, or any line of the 
 Phedre — 
 
 " D'un mensonge— aussi noir — justement— lrriteY' 
 
 and its rhythm will be found nearly identical with this, from 
 Anstey's Bath Guide — 
 
 " For his wig — had the luck — a cathartic — to meet." 
 
 On the contrary, the French burlesque verse is nearly the 
 same as the heroic ten syllable verse of the English. 
 
 VICE — miscalculation ; obliquity of moral vision ; tem- 
 porary madness. A single vice, thrown aside only because 
 it was worn out, is often considered a valid set off against 
 all those that we still retain. Heaven, it is said, rejoices 
 over one penitent sinner, more than over ninety and nine 
 that have never erred ; but it is not written that one sin, by 
 which we have been abandoned, is to give us acquittance 
 for the ninety and nine that we continue to practise. And 
 yet there are many who seem to imagine, that squeamish- 
 ness upon a single point will give them warrant for a want 
 of scruple upon all others. Brissot, to whose writings and 
 conduct the horrid massacres of the Tuileries, on the loth 
 of August, 1792, have been principally ascribed, exclaimed, 
 in defending himself to Dumont, — " Look at the extreme 
 simplicity of my dwelling, and see whether you can justly 
 reproach me with dissipation or frivolity. For two years 
 I have not been near a theatre ! " The man whose starch 
 morality will not allow him to witness tragedies at a play- 
 house, may surely be allowed to perpetrate them on the stage 
 of real life ! 
 
 It may be doubted, whether vice be so effectually re- 
 pressed by the fear of future, as of immediate punishment. 
 Jack Ketch exercises a more potent influence than the devil; 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 357 
 
 for none can doubt the existence of the former, while evil 
 men have a strong motive to be sceptical as to the existence 
 and avenging power of the latter. The hope of future re- 
 ward is the best consolation to the good under affliction ; 
 but the belief that virtue and vice are their own reward and 
 punishment, even in this world, will moralise many from 
 a sense of interest, who might not have been so certainly 
 reclaimed by a sense of duty. 
 
 VULGARITY — is not found in uncivilized life, because, 
 in that state, there is little difference of rank, and less 
 of manners; nor is it, in a civilized country, a deficiency 
 of politeness or refinement, as compared with the most 
 polished classes; for a peasant may be a gentleman, and 
 a peer a vulgarian. 
 
 Vulgarity of manners may co-exist with a polished mind, 
 and urbanity with a vulgar one : the union of both consti - 
 tutes the gentleman, whatever may be the grade in which it 
 is found. 
 
 ITCH CRAFT, Belief in — a reproach to rea- 
 son, and a monument of folly and atrocity, 
 composing part and parcel of the wisdom and 
 humanity of our ancestors. The most magical 
 circumstance, attending imputed magic, is the 
 apparent impossibility of its being believed, even by the 
 parties implicated, whether witches or witchfinders. Sorcery 
 was a convenient crime to fix upon those who had no other; 
 but how could it be credited that helpless, lonely, infirm, 
 and suffering old women, — for such were generally reputed 
 to be witches, — if they had obtained command over the 
 powers of light or darkness, would not exercise it for their 
 own benefit and relief, before they thought of directing it to 
 
358 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 the good or evil of others ? A wretched creature, from mere 
 malignity, is supposed to inflict injuries upon her neigh- 
 bours ; and yet these identical parties scruple not to provoke 
 her terrible malice to the utmost, by bringing her to a 
 painful and ignominious death, from which her puissant 
 ally, Satan, can do nothing to save her. Was ever such 
 a tissue of glaring impossibilities ! Apuleius, who was ac- 
 cused of magic, availed himself of this argument — "Sin verb, 
 more vulgari, cum isti proprie magum existimant, qui com- 
 munione loquendi cum Diis immorlaZibus, ad omina qucB 
 velit, incredibili quadam vi, contingere polleat; oppidb miror 
 cur accusare non timuerint quern posse tantum fatentur? 
 
 James the First, as it is well known, wrote a treatise on 
 Demonology; the large-minded Bacon countenanced witch- 
 craft; Sir Matthew Hale thanked God, upon his knees, that 
 he had lived to condemn sorcerers to death; the lawyers, 
 quoting from the Malleus Malencarum, stickled as stoutly as 
 usual for the maintenance of the old law, and the wisdom of 
 our ancestors ; while the clergy, citing the Bible, and the 
 witch of Endor, stigmatised, as infidels and atheists, those 
 who objected to the burning of all old women known to 
 be partial to black cats, or suspected of taking nocturnal 
 rides through the air, upon an enchanted broomstick. If it 
 had not been for the efforts of unprofessional teachers, the 
 common people would still remain plunged in a Serbonian 
 bog, of the darkest ignorance and superstition. Truly they 
 are much indebted to their pastors and masters ! 
 
 WAGS AND WITS— lamps that exhaust themselves in 
 giving light to others. Their gibes, their gambols, their 
 songs, their flashes of merriment, their puns and bon-mots, 
 and bright, and sharp, and pointed sayings, are but as 
 so many swords, which, the oftener they are drawn forth, 
 do but the sooner wear out the scabbard. It is much easier 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 359 
 
 to make others forget time, than to prevail on old Chronos to 
 forget us. The fetes to which a man of wit is invited, only 
 afford an excuse to the fates for shortening his thread. He 
 finds it is no joke to be always joking ; his stomach and his 
 convivial reputation fail him at once ; his jests die because 
 he cannot digest ; so many good things have gone into his 
 mouth, that none can come out of it; and the fellow of 
 mark and likelihood, without whom no party was deemed 
 complete, no laughter-loving guests assured of constant 
 coruscations and cachinnations, becomes used up, worn 
 out, stultified, superannuated, and is left to his obscure 
 lodging, to digest, if he can, his own indigestions, to be 
 taken by the hand by no one but the gout, and to try 
 solitary conclusions with the grim sergeant — death. An 
 old joke, especially if it be very little of its age, is a bad 
 thing, as the readers of this work must often have exclaimed ; 
 but an old joker is a sad thing, as many a facetious ancient 
 has found to his cost. 
 
 WANTS — Suicides and self-destroyers. Man's bodily 
 wants have been the great stimulus to all the arts, sciences, 
 and discoveries, which have elevated him to his present 
 civilization. The nakedness, helplessness, and necessities 
 of the " bare forked animal," combined with the amazing 
 powers and lofty aspirations of his reason, have enabled 
 him to become the true lord of the creation, to conquer 
 the elements by which he is surrounded, and to make them 
 minister not only to the removal of his minutest wants, but 
 to the supply of his most superfluous luxuries. Had he been 
 born with the fur coat, or the stomach of a bear, he would 
 have remained a brute, or at best a savage. 
 
 WAR — National madness. An irrational act confined to 
 rational beings; the pastime of kings and statesmen, the 
 
360 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 curse of subjects. Admitting the social instinct of man, 
 Montesquieu was not afraid to confess, that the state of war 
 begins with that of society ; but this desolating truth, which 
 Hobbes has abused to praise the tranquillity of despotism, 
 and Rousseau, to celebrate the superior independence of 
 savage life, is with the philosopher the sacred and salu- 
 tary plea for government and laws, which are an armistice 
 between states, and a treaty of perpetual peace between 
 citizens. 
 
 WHIGS — in power, are often Tories, as Tories, out of 
 power, are Whigs. The public may well say with Mercutio, 
 " A plague on both your houses," having found, to their 
 cost, that whichever party comes in, they are sure to be 
 losers, and that — 
 
 " C'st pour le peuple une chose moins aigre, 
 D'entretenir un gras, que d'engraisser un maigre." 
 
 When, in the history of this country, we see one party 
 driven out for incapacity, and their opponents claiming 
 the reins of government as a matter of course, although 
 they had not long before been expelled for a similar in- 
 competency, we are reminded of the argumentative answer 
 of the Irish peasant, — " Paddy, do you know how to drive ?" 
 — " Sure I do ; never a better coachman in all Connaught. 
 Wasn't it I who upset your honour into a ditch two years 
 ago?" As the present Whigs, however, who have given 
 us Reform, have made abundant atonement for the errors 
 of their predecessors, they should be free from any reproach 
 that may attach to the name. It has now merged into the 
 more noble one of Reformers, and so long as they continue 
 to direct their power to the same patriotic and beneficial 
 ends, no lover of his country will wish to see them dis- 
 possessed of it. As to the Tories, they have confessed 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 36 1 
 
 everything laid to their charge, by acknowledging the very 
 name to be so odious, that they have been fain to betake 
 themselves to an alias. 
 
 WHISKERS.—" I cannot imagine," said Alderman H— , 
 " why my whiskers should turn grey, so much sooner than 
 the hair of my head." " Because you have worked so much 
 more with your jaws than your brains ; " observed a wag. 
 
 WINDMILLS — machines which are only kept going by 
 being perpetually puffed, in which respect they bear a 
 pointed resemblance to certain authors. The latter raise 
 the wind by increasing their sale, whereas the former 
 diminish their sail as the wind increases. 
 
 WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS— the experience of 
 the inexperienced, and the superior knowledge of the igno- 
 rant. Old women in pantaloons, who object to the smallest 
 reform in our antiquated establishments, because they suited 
 our forefathers, recall to memory the debate in the assembly 
 of the Sorbonne upon the propriety of ordering new table- 
 cloths. — " What ! " exclaimed a grey-bearded doctor, the 
 conservative of the college, " are we wiser than our grand- 
 fathers ? Are not these the identical cloths of which they so 
 long made use?" — "Yes," said another, "and that is the 
 reason why they are completely worn out." 
 
 WIT — consists in discovering likenesses — judgment in 
 detecting differences. Wit is like a ghost, much more often 
 talked of than seen. To be genuine, it should have a basis 
 of truth and applicability, otherwise it degenerates into mere 
 flippancy ; as, for instance, when Swift says, — " A very little 
 wit is valued in a woman, as we are pleased with a few 
 words spoken plain by a parrot ;" or when Voltaire remarks, 
 
362 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 that " Ideas are like beards; women and young men have 
 none." This is a random facetiousness, if it deserves that 
 term, which is equally despicable for its falsehood and its 
 facility. 
 
 Where shall we discover that rarer species of wit, which, 
 like the vine, bears the more clusters of sweet grapes the 
 oftener it is pruned ; or like the seven-mouthed Nile, springs 
 the faster from the head, the more copiously it flows from 
 the mouth ? 
 
 The sensations excited by wit are destroyed, or at least 
 impaired, if it excites the stronger emotions, or even if it 
 be connected with purposes of utility and improvement. 
 We may laugh where it is bitter, as the Sardinians did 
 when they had tasted of their venomous herb ; but this is 
 the risibility of the muscles, allied to convulsion, rather than 
 to intellectual pleasure. 
 
 You may sometimes show that you have not got your 
 own wits about you, by thinking that other people have. 
 When Mrs. M 'Gibbon was preparing to act Jane Shore, at 
 Liverpool, her dresser, an ignorant country girl, informed 
 her that a woman had called to request two box orders, 
 because she and her daughter had walked four miles on 
 purpose to see the play. "Does she know me?" inquired 
 the mistress. "Not at all," was the reply, "What a very 
 odd request!" exclaimed Mrs. M'G. — "Has the good 
 woman got her faculties about her?" — "I think she have, 
 Ma'am, for I see she ha' got summut tied up in a red silk 
 handkercher." 
 
 WOMAN — an exquisite production of nature, between a 
 rose and an angel, according to a German poet; the female 
 of the human species, according to the zoologists; the re- 
 deeming portion of humanity, according to politer fact and 
 experience. Woman is a treasure of which the profligate 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 363 
 
 and the unmarried, can never appreciate the full value, for 
 he who possesses many does not possess one. Malherbe, 
 says in his Letters, that the Creator may have repented the 
 creation of man, but that He had no reason to repent having 
 made woman ? Who will deny this : and which of us does 
 not feel, though in due subjection to a holier religion, the 
 devotion of Anacreon, who, when he was asked, why he 
 addressed so many of his hymns to women, and so 
 few to the deities? answered, "Because women are my 
 deities." 
 
 In England the upper classes are generally so much 
 occupied with public affairs, or with local and magisterial 
 duties, to say nothing of the uncongenial sports of the field, 
 that women are obliged to associate with frivolous danglers 
 and idlers, to whose standard they necessarily lower their 
 minds and their conversation. To appear a blue-stocking 
 subjects a female to certain ridicule with those coxcombs 
 who adopt the silly notion of Lessing, " that a young lady 
 who thinks, is like a man who rouges," and who maintain 
 that she should address herself, not to the sense, but to 
 the senses of her male companions. Politics have thus 
 tended to effect a mental dissociation of the sexes, the 
 jealousy of dunces to trivialise the conversational inter- 
 course that still subsists, and women whose unchecked 
 intellectual energies would be u Dolphin-like, and show 
 themselves above the element they move in," are compelled 
 to bow to this subjection, unless they have the courage to 
 set up for blue-stockings — and old maids. Were their 
 supremacy to effect no change in the present general cha- 
 racter of the sex, I believe the world would be an in- 
 calculable gainer by making them lords of their lords, and 
 committing to them the sole direction of all affairs, both 
 national and domestic. As some of our most distinguished 
 sovereigns have been females, is it unreasonable to conclude 
 
364 THE TIN TRUMPET; 
 
 that we should insure permanent good government for the 
 whole human race, by acknowledging the sovereignty of 
 the sex ? 
 
 To the French must be assigned the honour of the fol- 
 lowing just encomium, " Sans les femmes les deux extremites 
 de la vie seraient sans secours, et le milieu sans plaisirsP 
 
 WORDS — sometimes signs of ideas, and sometimes of 
 the want of them. When so many are coining new words, 
 it is a security against a superfluous supply to know that 
 old ones are occasionally lost. An .Eton scholar, whose 
 faculties had been bemuddled with the spondees and dactyls 
 of prosody, having got out of nominal into real nonsense 
 verses, carried up a soi-disant Latin epigram to his master. 
 After reading it over two or three times very carefully, the 
 pedagogue exclaimed, " I cannot find any verb here." — 
 " That is the reason that I brought it to you," said the 
 boy with great naivete', " I thought you might perhaps tell 
 me where it was." 
 
 WORDSWORTH.— The cheerful piety of this writer, his 
 penetrative wisdom, most profound when it appears the most 
 simple, and his ennobling aspirations, all modulated into 
 the most exquisite music of which our language is sus- 
 ceptible, touch a chord, as we are reading him, with which 
 every heart may be proud to beat in unison. Not in cities, 
 not in colleges, nor even in the solitary cell, can his writings 
 be properly appreciated. We should wander forth with them 
 to the fields and groves, where we may imbibe the kindred 
 influences of nature, and hold communion with the Creator 
 through the medium of the beauty and magnificence He 
 hath everywhere created ; until the hallowed and invigorated 
 soul, throwing off all its petty cares and misgivings, effuses 
 itself in a serene delight. To feel the poems of Wordsworth, 
 
OR, HEADS AND TALES. 365 
 
 we should peruse them with the fresh air of heaven blowing 
 round about us, amid the scenes that he pictures, where we 
 may compare the face of nature with its reflection in the 
 printed mirror before us; where we may acknowledge the 
 presence and the influence of that exhilarating Spirit which 
 he loves to evoke, and yielding ourselves to the devout reve- 
 ries he has so described, may gradually sink into — 
 
 " that serene and blessed mood, 
 
 In which the affections gently lead us on, 
 
 Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, 
 
 And even the motion of our human blood, 
 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 
 In body, and become a living soul ; ■( 
 
 While with a heart made quiet by the power 
 
 Of harmony, and the deep sense of joy, 
 
 We see into the life of things." 
 
 WORLD, The — a great inn, kept in a perpetual bustle 
 by arrivals and departures : by the going away of those who 
 have just paid their bills (the debt of nature), and the coming 
 of those who will soon have a similar account to settle : — 
 Decessio pereuntiurn, et successio fieriturorum. 
 
 WRITING — painting invisible words — giving substance 
 and colour to immaterial thought, enabling the dumb to talk 
 to the deaf. 
 
 WRONG — may be aggravated without any increase of 
 evil doing, as good may be diminished without any abate- 
 ment of actual beneficence. " Joyful remembrances of wrong 
 actions," says Jean Paul, "are their half repetitions, as re- 
 pentant remembrances of good ones are their half abolish- 
 ment. In law, the intention, not the act, constitutes the 
 crime ; and in the moral law, virtue should be measured by 
 the same standard. 
 
 A A* 
 
3^6 THE TIN TRUMPET. 
 
 AWNING — opening the mouth when you are 
 sleepy, and want to shut your eyes ; an in- 
 fectious sensation very prevalent during the 
 delivery of a tedious sermon, or the perusal 
 of a dull novel, but never experienced when 
 reading a work like the present ! 
 
 YEARS — of discretion. The young and giddy reader is 
 requested to see — Greek Calends. 
 
 YOUTH — a magic lantern, that surrounds us with illu- 
 sions which excite pleasure, surprise, and admiration, what- 
 ever be their nature. The old age of the sensual and the 
 vicious is the same lantern without its magic — the glasses 
 broken, and the illusions gone, while the exhausted lamp, 
 threatening every moment to expire, sheds a ghastly glare, 
 not upon a fair tablecloth, full of jocund associations, but 
 upon what appears to be a dismal shroud, prepared to 
 receive our remains. 
 
 And now, gentle reader, or rather may I call you simple, 
 if you have waded through this strange farrago, here will 
 I bring it to a close, hoping by its example the better to 
 impress upon you the pithy precept, that all our follies 
 and frivolities, all our crude and undigested notions, all 
 our "bald and disjointed talk," should, like this little volume, 
 terminate with — Youth. 
 
 the EN 
 
 *8 4 
 
 BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRTARS. 
 
c^ *■ ^**' 
 
 
 > " , \o^ -*'-,>•'"