IX.-ON THE GRACES AND ANXIETIES OF PIG-DRIVING. purpose; looking all as if they were shrugging their shoulders, and eschewing the tip-end of the whip of office. Much eye had they to their left leg; shrewd backward glances; not a little anticipative squeak, and sudden rush of avoidance. It was a superfluous clutter, and they felt it; but a pig finds it more difficult than any other animal to accommodate himself to circumstances. Being out of his pale, he is in the highest state of wonderment and inaptitude. He is sluggish, obstinate, opinionate, not very social; has no desire of seeing foreign parts. Think of him in a multitude, forced to travel, and wondering what the devil it is that drives him! Judge by this of the talents of his driver. FROM the perusal of this article we beg leave to warn off vulgar readers of all denominations, whether of the "great vulgar or the small." Warn, did we say? We drive them off; for Horace tells us that they, as well as pigs, are to be so treated. Odi profanum vulgus, says he, et arceo. But do thou lend thine ear, gentle shade of Goldsmith, who didst make thy bearleader denounce "everything as is low;" and thou, Steele, who didst humanise upon publichouses and puppet-shows; and Fielding, thou whom the great Richardson, less in that matter (and some others) than thyself, did accuse of vulgarity, because thou didst discern natural gentility in a footman, and yet was not to be taken in by the airs of Pamela and my Lady G. The title is a little startling; but "style and sentiment," as a lady said, 66 can do anything." Remember, then, gentle reader, that talents are not to be despised in the humblest walks of life; we will add, nor in the muddiest. The other day we happened to be among a set of spectators, who could not help stopping to admire the patience and address with which a pig-driver huddled and cherished onward his drove of unaccommodating élèves, down a street in the suburbs. He was a born genius for a Had he originated in a higher sphere, he would have been a general, or a stage-manager, or at least the head of a set of monks. Conflicting interests were his forte; pig-headed wills, and proceedings hopeless. To see the hand with which he did it! How hovering, yet firm; how encouraging, yet compelling; how indicative of the space on each side of him, and yet of the line before him; how general, how particular, how perfect! No barber's could quiver about a head with more lightness of apprehension; no cook's pat up and proportion the side of a pasty with a more final eye. The whales, quoth old Chap-resumed his course, not without a happy man, speaking of Neptune, manœuvre. The whales exulted under him, and knew their mighty king. The pigs did not exult, but they knew their king. Unwilling was their subjection, but "more in sorrow than in anger." They were too far gone for rage. Their case was hopeless. They did not see why they should proceed, but they felt themselves bound to do so; forced, conglomerated, crowded onwards, irresistibly impelled by fate and Jenkins. Often would they have bolted under any other master. They squeaked and grunted as in ordinary; they sidled, they shuffled, they half stopped; they turned an eye to all the little outlets of escape; but in vain. There they stuck (for their very progress was a sort of sticking), charmed into the centre of his sphere of action, laying their heads together, but to no We beheld a man once, an inferior genius, inducting a pig into the other end of Longlane, Smithfield. He had got him thus far towards the market. It was much. His air announced success in nine parts out of ten, and hope for the remainder. It had been a happy morning's work; he had only to look for the termination of it; and he looked (as a critic of an exalted turn of mind would say) in brightness and in joy. Then would he go to the public-house, and indulge in porter and a pleasing security. Perhaps he would not say much at first, being oppressed with the greatness of his success; but by degrees, especially if interrogated, he would open, like Æneas, into all the circumstances of his journey and the perils that beset him. Profound would be his set out; full of tremor his middle course; high and skilful his progress; glorious, though with a quickened pulse, his triumphant entry. Delicate had been his situation in Duckingpond row; masterly his turn at Bell-alley. We saw him with the radiance of some such thought on his countenance. He was just entering Long-lane. A gravity came upon him, as he steered his touchy convoy into this his last thoroughfare. A dog moved him into a little agitation, darting along; but he It trepidation, hovering as he was on the borders He bolts! He's off!-Erasit! erupit! "Oh, Ch-st?" exclaimed the man, dashing his hand against his head, lifting his knee in an agony, and screaming with all the weight of a prophecy which the spectators felt to be too true-" He'll go up all manner of streets!” Poor fellow we think of him now sometimes, driving up Duke-street, and not to be comforted in Barbican. X.-PANTOMIMES. HE that says he does not like a pantomime, either says what he does not think, or is not so wise as he fancies himself. He should grow young again, and get wiser. "The child," as the poet says, "is father to the man ;" and in this instance, he has a very degenerate offspring. Yes: John Tomkins, aged 35, and not liking pantomimes, is a very unpromising little boy. Consider, Tomkins, you have still a serious regard for pudding, and are ambitious of being thought clever. Well, there is the Clown who will sympathise with you in dumplings; and not to see into the cleverness of Harlequin's quips and metamorphoses, is to want a perception, which other little boys have by nature. Not to like pantomimes, is not to like animal spirits; it is not to like motion; not to like love; not to like a jest upon dulness and formality; not to smoke one's uncle; not to like to see a thump in the face; not to laugh; not to fancy; not to like a holiday; not to know the pleasure of sitting up at Christmas; not to sympathise with one's children; not to remember that we have been children ourselves; nor that we shall grow old, and be as gouty as Pantaloon, if we are not as wise and as active as they. | Not wishing to be dry on so pleasant a subject, we shall waive the learning that is in us on the origin of these popular entertainments. It will be sufficient to observe, that among the Italians, from whom we borrowed them, they consisted of a run of jokes upon the provincial peculiarities of their countrymen. Harlequin, with his giddy vivacity, was the representative of the inhabitant of one state; Pantaloon, of the imbecile carefulness of another; the clown, of the sensual, macaroni-eating Neapolitan, with his instinct for eschewing danger; and Columbine, Harlequin's mistress, was the type, not indeed of the outward woman (for the young ladies were too restrained in that matter), but of the inner girl of all the lasses in Italy, the tender fluttering heart, the little dove (colombina), ready to take flight with the first lover, and to pay off old scores with the gout and the jealousy, that had hitherto kept her in durance. The reader has only to transfer the characters to those of his own countrymen, to have a lively sense of the effect which these national pictures must have had in Italy. Imagine Harlequin a gallant adventurer from some particular part of the land, full of life and fancy, sticking at no obstacles, leaping gates and windows, hitting off a satire at every turn, and converting the very scrapes he gets in, to matters of jest and triumph. The old gentleman that pursues him, is a miser from some manufacturing town, whose ward he has run away with. The Clown is a London cockney, with a prodigious eye to his own comfort and muffins,-a Lord Mayor's fool, who loved "every thing that was good;" and Columbine is the boarding-school girl, ripe for running away with, and making a dance of it all the way from Chelsea to Gretna Green. Pantomime is the only upholder of comedy, when there is nothing else to show for it. It is the satirist, or caricaturist of the times, ridiculing the rise and fall of hats and funds, the growth of aldermen or of bonnets, the pretences of quackery; and watching innovations of all sorts, lest change be too hasty. But this view of it is for the older boys. For us, who, upon the strength of our sympathy, boast of being among the young ones, its life, its motion, its animal spirits, are the thing. We sit among the shining faces on all sides of us, and fancy ourselves at this moment enjoying it. What whim! what fancy! what eternal movement! The performers are like the blood in one's veins, never still; and the music runs with equal vivacity through the whole spectacle, like the pattern of a watered ribbon. In comes Harlequin, demi-masked, partycoloured, nimble-toed, lithe, agile; bending himself now this way, now that; bridling up like a pigeon; tipping out his toe like a dancer; then taking a fantastic skip; then standing ready at all points, and at right angles with his omnipotent lath-sword, the emblem of the converting power of fancy and light-heartedness. Giddy as we think him, he is resolved to show us that his head can bear more giddiness than we fancy; and lo! beginning with it by degrees, he whirls it round into a very spin, with no more remorse than if it were a button. Then he draws his sword, slaps his enemy, who has just come upon him, into a settee; and springing upon him, dashes through the window like a swallow. Let us hope that Columbine and the high road are on the other side, and that he is already a mile on the road to Gretna for Here comes Pantaloon, with his stupid servant; not the Clown, but a proper grave blockhead, to keep him in heart with himself. What a hobbling old rascal it is! How void of any handsome infirmity! His very gout is owing to his having lived upon twopence farthing. Not finding Harlequin and Columbine, he sends his servant to look in the further part of the house, while he hobbles back to see what has become of that lazy fellow the Clown. He, the cunning rogue, who has been watching mid-way, and now sees the coast clear, enters in front, -round-faced, goggle-eyed, knock-kneed, but agile to a degree of the dislocated, with a great smear for his mouth, and a cap on his head, half fool's and half cook's. Commend him to the dinner that he sees on table, and that was laid for Harlequin and his mistress. Merry be their hearts: there is a time for all things; and while they dance through a dozen inds to their hearts' content, he will eat a Sussex dumpling or so. Down he sits, contriving a luxurious seat, and inviting himself with as many ceremonies as if he had the whole day before him: but when he once begins, he seems as if he had not a moment to lose. The dumpling vanishes at a cram :-the sausages are abolished :-down go a dozen yards of macaroni: and, he is in the act of paying his duties to a gallon of rum, when in come Pantaloon and his servant at opposite doors, both in search of the glutton, both furious, and both resolved to pounce on the rascal headlong. They rush forward accordingly; he slips from between them with a Hallo, I say;" and the two poor devils dash their heads against one another, like rams. They rebound fainting asunder to the stagedoors while the Clown, laughing with all his shoulders, nods a health to each, and finishes his draught. He then holds a great cask of a snuff-box to each of their noses, to bring them to; and while they are sneezing and tearing their souls out, jogs off at his leisure. Ah-here he is again on his road, Harlequin with his lass, fifty miles advanced in an hour, and caring nothing for his pursuers, though they have taken the steam-coach. Now the lovers dine indeed; and having had no motion to signify, join in a dance. Here Columbine shines as she ought to do. The little slender, but plump rogue! How she winds it hither and thither with her trim waist, and her waxen arms! now with a hand against her side, tripping it with no immodest insolence in a hornpipe; now undulating it in a waltz; or "caracoling" it, as Sir Thomas Urquhart would say, in the saltatory style of the opera ;-but always Columbine; always the little dove who is to be protected; something less than the opera-dancer, and greater; more unconscious, yet not so; and ready to stretch her gauze wings for a flight, the moment Riches would tear her from Love. But these introductions of the characters by themselves do not give a sufficient idea of the great pervading spirit of the pantomime, which is motion; motion for ever, and motion all at once. Mr. Jacob Bryant, who saw everything in anything, and needed nothing but the taking a word to pieces to prove that his boots and the constellation Bootes were the same thing, would have recognised in the word Pantomime the Anglo-antediluvian compound, a Pant-o'mimes! that is to say, a set of Mimes or Mimics, all panting together. Or he would have de tected the obvious Anglo-Greek meaning of a set of Mimes, expressing Pan, or Every-thing, by means of the Toe,-Pan-Toe-Mime. this as it may, Pantomime is certainly a representation of the vital principle of all things, from the dance of the planets down to that of Damon and Phillis. Everything in it keeps moving; there is no more cessation than there is in nature; and though we may endeavour to fix our attention upon one mover or set of Be movers at a time, we are conscious that all are going on. The Clown, though we do not see him, is jogging somewhere;-Pantaloon and his servant, like Saturn and his ring, are still careering it behind their Mercury and Venus; and when Harlequin and Columbine come in, do we fancy they have been resting behind the scenes? The notion! Look at them: they are evidently in full career: they have been, as well as are, dancing; and the music, which never ceases whether they are visible or not, tells us as much. Let readers, of a solemn turn of mistake, disagree with us if they please, provided they are ill-humoured. The erroneous, of a better nature, we are interested in; having known what it is to err like them. These are apt to be mistaken out of modesty (sometimes out of apardonable vanity in wishing to be esteemed); and in the case before us, they will sin against the natural candour of their hearts by condemning an entertainment which they enjoy, because they think it a mark of sense to do so. Let them know themselves to be wiser than those who are really of that opinion. There is nothing wiser than a cheerful pulse, and all innocent things which tend to keep it so. The crabbedest philosopher that ever lived (if he was a philosopher, and crabbed against his will) would have given thousands to feel as they do; and he would have known, that it redounded to his honour and not to his disgrace, to own it. XI.-CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. READERS of newspapers are constantly being shocked with the unnatural conduct of parents towards their children. Some are detected in locking them up and half-starving them; others tax them beyond their strength, and scourge them dreadfully for not bearing it; others take horrible dislikes to their children, and vex and torture them in every way they can think of, short of subjecting themselves to the gallows. In most cases the tyranny is of long duration before it is exposed. A whole neighbourhood are saddened by the cries of the poor victim, till they are obliged to rise up in self-defence and bring the criminal to justice. By this we may judge how many miseries are taking place of which people have no suspicion; how many wretches have crimes of this sort, to account for the evil in their looks; and how many others, more criminal because more lying, go about in decent repute, while some oppressed and feeble relative, awfully patient, is awaiting in solitude the horror of the returning knock at the door. It is alleged by offenders of this description, that the children are vicious and provoking; that their conduct is very "aggravating," as the phrase is; and that "nothing can mend them but blows," which never do. But whence come the faults of children? and how were they suffered to grow to such a height? Really, setting aside these monsters of unpaternity, parents are apt to demand a great many virtues in their children, which they do not themselves possess. The child, on the mere strength of their will, and without any of their experience, is expected to have good sense, good temper, and Heaven knows how many other good qualities; while the parents perhaps, notwithstanding all the lessons they have received from time and trouble, have little or nothing of any of them. Above all, they forget that, in originating the bodies of their children, they originate their minds and temperaments; that a child is but a continuation of his father and mother, or their fathers and mothers, and kindred; that it is further modified and made what it is by education and bringing up; and that on all these accounts the parents have no excuse for abusing and tormenting it; unless with equal wisdom and a glorious impartiality they should abuse and torment themselves in like manner, - scourge their own flesh, and condemn themselves to a crust and a black hole. If a father were to give his own sore legs a good flogging for inheriting ill-humours from his ancestors, he might with some show of reason proceed to punish the continuation of them in those of his child. If a cruel mother got into a handsome tub of cold water of a winter morning, and edified the neighbours with the just and retributive shrieks which she thence poured forth for a couple of hours, crying out to her deceased 'mammy" that she would be a good elderly woman in future, and not a scold and a reprobate, then she might like a proper mad woman (for she is but an improper one now) put her child into the tub after her, and make it shriek out "mammy" in its turn. aggra But let us do justice to all one's fellowcreatures, not forgetting these very vating" parents. To regard them as something infernal, and forget that they, as well as their children, have become what they are from circumstances over which they had no control, is to fall into their own error, and forget our common humanity. We believe that the very worst of these domestic tyrants (and it is an awful lesson for the best of them) would have been shocked in early life, if they could have been shown, in a magic glass, what sort of beings they would become. Suppose one of them a young man, blooming with health, and not illnatured, but subject to fits of sulkiness or passion, and not very wise; and suppose that in this glass he sees an old ill-looking fellow, scowling, violent, outrageous, tormenting with a bloody scourge his own child, who is meagre, squalid, and half-starved,-"Good God!" he would 66 cry, can that be myself? Can that be my arm, and my face? And that my own poor little child? There are devils then, and I am doomed to be one of them." And the tears would pour into his eyes. No: not so, poor wretch thou art no devil,-there is no such thing as devilishness or pure malice for its own sake; the very cruellest actions are committed to relieve the cravings of the perpetrator's want of excitement, more than to hurt another. But though no devil, you are very ignorant, and are not aware of your ignorance. The energies of the universe, being on a great scale, are liable, in their progress from worse to better, to great roughness in the working, and appalling sounds of discord. The wiser you become, the more you diminish this jarring, and tend to produce that amelioration. Learn this, and be neither appalled nor appalling; or if your reflections do not travel so far, and you are in no danger of continuing your evil course by the subtle desperations of superstition, be content to know, that nobody ill-treats another, who is satisfied with his own conduct. If the case were otherwise, it would be worse ; for you would not have the excuse, even of a necessity for relieving your own sensations. But it never is so, sophisticate about it as you may. The very pains you take to reconcile yourself to yourself, may show you how much need you have of doing so. It is nothing else which makes the silliest little child sulky; and the same folly makes the grown man a tyrant. When you begin to ill-treat your child, you begin to punish in him your own faults; and you most likely do nothing but beat them in upon him with every stroke of the scourge: for why should he be wiser than you? Why should he be able to throw off the ill-humours of which your greater energies cannot get rid ? These thoughts we address to those who are worthy of them; and who, not being tyrants, may yet become such, for want of reflection. Vulgar offenders can be mended only with the whole progress of society, and the advancement of education. There is one thing we' must not omit to say, which is, that the best parents are apt to expect too much of their children, and to forget how much error they may have committed in the course of bringing them up. Nobody is in fault, in a criminal sense. Children have their excuses, and parents have their excuses; but the wiser any of us become, the less we exact from others, and the more we do to deserve their regard. The great art of being a good parent consists in setting a good example, and in maintaining that union of dispassionate firmness with habitual good-humour, which a child never thinks of treating with disrespect. We have here been speaking principally of the behaviour of parents to little children. When violent disputes take place between parents and children grown up,-young men and women,-there are generally great faults on are sufficient; or two or three would be better. It is the sudden sense of the height at which people sleep, and the despair of escape which consequently seizes them, for want of some such provision, that disables them from think both sides; though, for an obvious reason, the parent, who has had the training and formation of the other, is likely to be most in the wrong. But unhappily, very excellent people may sometimes find themselves hampered in a calamity of this nature; and out of that sorting of any other resources. Houses, it is true, of weakness which is so often confounded with strength, turn their very sense of being in the right, to the same hostile and implacable purpose as if it were the reverse. We can only say, that from all we have seen in the world, and indeed from the whole experience of mankind, they who are conscious of being right, are the first to make a movement towards reconciliation, let the cause of quarrel be what it may; and that there is no surer method, in the eyes of any who know what human nature is, both to sustain the real dignity of the right side, and to amend the wrong one. To kind-hearted fathers in general, who have the misfortune to get into a dilemma of this sort, we would recommend the pathetic story of a French general, who was observed, after the death of his son in battle, never to hold up his head. He said to a friend, "My boy was used to think me severe; and he had too much reason to do so. He did not know how I loved him at the bottom of my heart; and it is now too late." XII.-HOUSES ON FIRE. IT is astonishing how little imagination there is in the world, in matters not affecting men's immediate wants and importance. People seem to require a million thumps on the head, before they can learn to guard against a head-ache. This would be little; but the greater the calamity, the less they seem to provide against it. All the fires in this great metropolis, and the frightful catastrophes which are often the result, do not show the inhabitants that they ought to take measures to guard against them, and that these measures are among the easiest things in the world. Every man who has a family, and whose house is too high to allow of jumping out of the windows, ought to consider himself bound to have a fire-escape. What signifies all the care he has taken to be a good husband or father, and all the provision he has made for the wellbeing of his children in after-life, if in one frightful moment, in the dead of night, with horror glaring in their faces, and tender and despairing words swallowed up in burning and suffocation, amidst cracking beams and rafters, sinking floors, and a whole yielding gulf of agony, they are all to cease to be!-to perish like so many vermin in a wall! Fireescapes, even if they are not made so already (as we believe they are) can evidently be constructed in a most easy, cheap, and commodious manner. A basket and a double rope generally have trap-doors to the roof; but these are not kept in readiness for use; a ladder is wanting; or the door is hard to be got up; the passage to it is difficult, or involved in the fire; and the roof may not be a safe one to walk over; children cannot act for themselves; terror affects the older people; and, therefore, on all these accounts, nothing is more desirable than that the means of escape should be at hand, should be facile, and capable of being used in concert with the multitude below. People out of doors are ever ready and anxious to assist. Those brave fellows, the firemen, would complete the task, if time allowed, and circumstances had hitherto prevented it; and handle the basket and the little riders in it, with confidence, like so many chickens. A time perhaps will come, when every window in a high bed-chamber will have an escape to it, as a matter of course; but it is a terrible pity, meanwhile, that for want of a little imagination out of the common pale of their Mondays and Wednesdays, a whole metropolis, piquing themselves on their love of their families, should subject themselves and the dearest objects of their affection to these infernal accidents. In an honest state of society, houses would all communicate with one another by common doors; and families destroyed by fire would be among the monstrosities of history. XIII.-A BATTLE OF ANTS.-DESIRABLENESS OF 66 TAKING up, the other day, a number of the Edinburgh Journal of Science, we met with the following account of a battle of ants. It is contained in the notice of a memoir by M. Hanhart, who describes the battle as having taken place between two species of these insects, one the formica rufa, and the other a little black ant, which he does not name (probably the fofusca)." In other respects, as the reviewer observes, the subject is not new, the celebrated Huber having described a battle of this kind before; but as natural history lies out of the way of many readers (though calculated to please them all, if they are genuine readers of anything), and as it has suggested to us a few remarks which may further the objects we have in writing, the account shall be here repeated. "M. Hanhart saw these insects approach in armies composed of their respective swarms, |