Enter TRIMMING. "Trim. Sir Dudley Dorimant, Miss. Shall I let your mamma know? or show him in here? "Miss Rac. No, no; in here, to be sure. I can send him (pointing to the Music Master) away as usual. (Puts her hand to her head, as if taken suddenly ill.)—Lord! I have got such a sudden pain in my head, I could not play another note to-day for the world. "Music M. (Taking up his hat and stick.) Oh! no, to be sure. it would be ver bad for you.-Poor young lady! you are so subject to dese pains in your head! I come again to-morrow? "Trim. Ay, ay, you may come, if you please; we can always send you away again, as we do to-day. "Music M. Tant mieux, tant mieux, so much de better. [Exeunt Music Master and Trimming. "MISS RACKET, sola. "Now, to receive this lover of mine.-Lover, indeed! if it was not that mamma is angry at it, and jealous, it is no more like love-no distress, no fears, no quarrels, no letters !-Captain Sash, now, to my fancy, is fifty times a better lover-but then, for a husband, I think Sir Dudley would do very well, and so-every one in their way; but I won't be dawdled with much longer, I can tell him, like a beauty without a shilling." - Doctor Syrop, the fashionable physician, is another satirical delineation of much merit; he waits on Lady Selina Vapour, whose nerves are in such a state that she positively cannot stir until he has wound her up. He asks what key he shall uselaudanum ?-She takes it every day. Ether?-it is filthy. Cordials?-it is dram-drinking, and at last protests that her ladyship's nerves are of so singularly fine a texture that he has exhausted the whole materia medica upon them in vain; whereupon she exclaims that her case baffles the art of all her physicians. Sir Dudley Dorimant enters, and Syrop bows very formally to him, because it is absolutely necessary in his business not to be the first to claim acquaintance, hints that if "it were not for him Lord and Lady Dovecott would not be quoted as models of conjugal fidelity," and says that "a certain young heir owes his title to him as much as ever his ancestors did to the King." 66 (Lady SELINA coughs.) "Dr Sy. Does that cough mean that your lungs are afflicted? "Lady S. Oh! this climate is enough to affect any lungs-don't you think I should change it, Doctor? "Dr Sy. Oh Lord! no, by no means, Ma'am-must not lose so good a patient, if I can help it-(aside). We shall do very well without that-let me see (feels her pulse); suppose we were to stay a few weeks longer in town, just during the spring, and then take the waters at Tunbridge, or bathe in the sea at Brighton, or go to Cheltenham, or "Lady S. Nothing of this sort will do. In short, I feel that nothing can save me but returning to Naples; and I depend upon your declaring to my father-in-law the absolute necessity of it. "Dr Sy. These sort of prescriptions are of a very peculiar nature, Ma'am, and— "Lady S. You need not doubt my putting a just value upon them. "Dr Sy. Well, well, well, we must reconsider the case, and then I shall certainly make no scruple of giving a very decided opinion. in favour of. What is the situation you would choose? "Lady S. Naples. You must assure him my life depends upon it. Dr Sy. Upon going immediately? or some time hence? "Lady S. Um!-not immediately. "Dr Sy. No, no, no, as soon as the weak state of your nerves will permit your moving with safety. What road do you mean to take? "Lady S. Must that be specified? "Dr Sy. Certainly best-prevents all suspicion. When I sent Lady Duper away from her Lord, last year, to Spa, I specified almost every post; insisted upon her absolutely avoiding all inns facing the north-east, and mentioned the very street and house in which I wished her to lodge. 66 Lady S. And did it succeed? "Dr Sy. In every respect; for she returned in perfect health, and produced a son and heir within the year. But I must be gone; am expected at three o'clock to a consultation upon the nerves of a Drysalter's lady in the Borough-shall soon dispatch her with a trip to Margate, and some tincture of valerian. "Lady S. Don't let the hurry of your business prevent your seeing Sir Valentine. "Dr Sy. See him certainly to-day-settle the matter as you would have it-am so used to these cases! In the meantime send you some composing draughts, something to quiet your nerves, support your spirits, and keep your mind quite easy. [Exit Syrop." Before closing this slight and rambling article we may, to distinguish ourselves from those to whom the subject we have taken up is an endless sneer, avow that the result of the attention we have given to the juvenile productions of her Majesty's Ministers has been to give us better opinions of them as men (we have nothing to do with them here as ministers) than we previously entertained. We have seen in almost every one of them many amiable and estimable qualities, many kind and benevolent purposes; they are lovers of letters, they are friends of mankind—and according to the measure of their gifts they have served the cause of which their judgments approved. They are not inspired poets, nor are they men of very exalted talents, but they are cultivated and accomplished, and the aspirations of their youth were good: a circumstance which draws a wide distinction between them and the Crokerites, who, in their truly gothic sympathies with feudal aristocracy, unalleviated by letters and their humanizing influences, have made the literary habits of ministers a perpetual theme of sneering and derision. They have another distinguishing feature-with the solitary exception of Lord Palmerston, who was a Tory when he wrote his part of the new Whig Guide, and whose playful satires have no malice in them, they are none of them political libellers - they versify, they do not vilify their spirit is benevolent and not malignant (the Crokerites slander women)-and to ministers cannot be addressed the rebuke of Mr Southey, intended, doubtless, for his former coadjutors— "What, art thou critical? quoth he; Another thing honourably distinguishes them from these men— they have not the least charlatanerie about them; they make no pretensions to acquirements they do not possess; we never find them writing on subjects they never studied-criticising books, and betraying by the epithets they employ that they have never read them-(the Crokerites call Guizot's History "beautiful," Thiers' "philosophical.") They are men we can respect while we differ from them, and they are evidently incapable of ideas so low as theirs who think that sane art consists in producing not the best and most beautiful productions, but those likely to have the largest sale. "Rank is a great beautifier," says Mr Bulwer, in his very beautiful and very spirited and successful Lady of Lyons' -and with the specimens we have quoted of the Melbourne Ministry before us, we may parody the aphorism, and say, "Place is a great versifier." Downing Street is the temple of the Muses. The tuneful nine live in Whitehall. The Foreign Office is the fountain of fun; the tragic muse presides in the Home Department. Sentiment rules the Exchequer. Rapture sleeps in the Colonial Office. The bard of Italy is the Secretary for Ireland; and comedy is the Premier of England. P. B. 225 ART. VIII. 1. First Report from the Select Committee on Postage, together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 4th April, 1838. 2. Post Office Reform. By Rowland Hill. Third Edition. THE post is justly regarded as one of the signs of civilization which especially present unequivocal and striking proofs of the mechanical co-operative, and moral progress of mankind. Mr Williams, the missionary, in his very interesting book on the South Sea Islands, mentions that he one day wanted, when engaged in some carpenter's work, a particular tool, the name of which he wrote with a piece of chalk on a chip, and then sent a native with it to his wife. When the simple islander found that the chip communicated the want and the required tool was given him, he thought the chip miraculous, held it up in his hands while he proclaimed its magic powers to his friends, and for many days wore it round his neck suspended by a string. Another savage once said that sending a letter was a good thing, because if a messenger was sent with a verbal communication he was sure to forget one half and tell the other. From the state indicated by these anecdotes to the state of matters in our improved post-the stride is so great that the latter seems perfection; a letter can be put into a small log-house, called a postoffice in the backwoods of America, with almost moral certainty that it will be delivered safely and speedily where it is directed, to a humble peasant in the most remote village in Germany; and it is a daily occurrence for a sister in the remotest islands of Orkney to put a letter, the kind impulse of a morning, into the post, and it speeds away without hinderance or obstacle, borne night and day, for a few shillings, ceaselessly, until it is opened by her brother in the interior of India. These effects of civilization are so great and wonderful and recent, the regularity and safety, the convenience and dispatch, of the Post Office are so universally felt, that most people's minds are at first unprepared for the surprising improvements of which it is capable, and by which the letters from America to Germany, and from Orkney to India, may be carried with equal certainty and swiftness, while the cost of their carriage is reduced from shillings to farthings. Yet the fact is easily proved. The present rates of postage are legacies of the late war as a means of meeting the expenses of which they were imposed. The great profits in every branch of trade during the war made VOL. XXXI. No. I. Q the public indifferent to the amount of the exactions—at least that part of the public who can make their complaints effectually heard but since the reductions of profits there have been growing up, without any open declarations of hostility to the post, silently and universally, innumerable plans of evading it systematically. There existed, therefore, a public sympathy with the object of Mr Rowland Hill's pamphlet, which, the moment he appealed to it, displayed itself. Last session, just before which the pamphlet appeared, five petitions were presented to Parliament in favour of Post Office Reform, and during only part of the present session ninety-nine petitions, with 7,016 signatures, have been presented chiefly from the most intelligent classes of the community and of this number a large proportion are petitions from corporate bodies or public meetings to which the single signature of the president or chairman is attached. The unwearied champion of Post Office Reform has been for a long time Mr Wallace, the Member for Greenock. That gentleman is, in many respects, a model of what a liberal Member of Parliament should be: and were there many such, the general estimation of the popular party would be far indeed from what it has sunk to. He has preferred to do a few things thoroughly rather than to fritter away his activity in trifling with many. Attempting no more than he could hope to succeed in, he has selected subjects which, from their novelty or unattractiveness, were not likely to be undertaken by others-chiefly the Post Office and the Reform of the Scotch Law-and with those he has gone forward, careless who opposed him, or whether anybody assisted him. To the Post Office officials he has made himself an object of unbounded abhorrence; to successive administrations, of sullen resistance: few in Parliament have given him aid or countenance, and the public long regarded his exertions with comparative indifference. As little effect was produced by the exposures and recommendations of persons invested with an official character. During the third part of a century commissions have been almost without intermission prosecuting investigations into the management of the Post Office. Some petty improvements have been, indeed, made at the suggestion of the commissioners, but they have been good deeds. of secresy, one of the Post Office functionaries having actually said before the Parliamentary Committee that they would be very sorry if the public were informed about them.* This session the motion for a committee to inquire into the * Ev. 1586. |