Punch (7.1844)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

157

EOT AX SPOET.

It will be in the recollection of our readers that a handsome rod (which
turns out to be really a fishing-rod after all), was a little while ago
presented to the Prince of Walks. His Royal Highness has lately had
3ome capital sport with this rod, having succeeded in capturing several of
his Mamma's gold fish, one of which was as big as a dace and weighed
six ounces. It waa very nearly pulling the Prince in.

PETER THE GREAT.

OIR PETER LAURIE is a great man—a very great man ! He had
^ already shown a hundred civic proofs of his greatness, when, only
a few days since, he exhibited proof a hundred and one. Fiat experi-
mentum in vili corpore ! Therefore, what a fine thing it is that there
should be desperate, life-weary wretches to prove the moral value of
an Alderman. A cat, a rat, a mouse may, by its agonies, beautifully
illustrate the philosophy of an air-pump. A miserable, wo-begone
Magdalen may in like manner bring out the wisdom, and, what is
more, the fine humanity of a Laurie. Let the reader be delighted
with the proof.

A forlorn young woman, named Elizabeth Morris, a poor
seduced creature, is charged before the Knight with having taken
poison; whereupon his philosophy is immediately exhibited—the
human air-pump is instantly set at work.

" Sim Pktjsr Lacrii said he should send her to the Old Bailey for attempted suicide.
It waa a fit case for trial, and he had no doubt she would be transported. He had pct
ah ixd to Persons attempting to drown themselves; he would now try
tmb same curb for attempteb Poisoning. He had no doubt that those who took
poison did not do so for the purpose of self-destruction, but for the purpose of exciting
sympathy; and such morbid charity was more calculated to do injury than any-
thing else."

Wise man—good man—great man ! He has ** put an end " to one
mode of suicide—he will, by the potency of his many-featured genius,
guard every avenue to death. He will stand sentinel on the banks
of Styx, and, by virtue of his power as an Alderman, forbid Charon
to take any shivering ghost into his boat that has not lawfully quitted
the flesh. He will, in a word, make death respectable, by placing it
out of the reach of the poor and desperate, until it shall be properly
awarded by disease or famine. Sapient magistrate—great northern
wizard of the human heart!

Laurie will put an end to suicide ! We have heard something of
the ecstasy of soul that possessed Newton, when the law of gravi-
tation burst in a flood of glory on his brain ; something, too, have
we heard of the moral transport of a Jenner, when his mind
grasped the antidote to fell disease. From this we can have some
faint, very faint, idea of the sublimated state of a Laurie, when, on
the tiptoe of his intellect, he grasped the golden secret that, even
among Aldermen, will immortalize him. We see him, arrectit auribtu,
and hear bis exulting soul braying like a trumpet, or some other
thing t

But wherefore, Laurie, with the impatience of genius, begin at

the wrong end ? It is good to put down suicide—yea, very good.
Die when you will, you have earned an epitaph bright and enduring
as the stars.

3ntr be put iJoron J^umtrr!

1_J

What a climax to a tombstone laudation ! Thus, the public life
of Laurie will practically realise the Portuguese perfection of a
sonnet—opening with a key of silver, and closing with one of gold I
Great Laurie !

But wherefore, again we ask—Oh, Laurie !—wherefore begin at
the wrong end ? Why not, great moral physician, first try to put
down the heart-ache ? Why not, from the high seat which, for some
yet inscrutable good, fortune has awarded you,—why not, as you are
so potent over the human machine, with all its passions, its moral
aches and miseries, its weariness, its utter recklessness of all, yea,
even of Laurie—why not cleanse the soul of "that perilous stuff"
that sinks it to the grave I

Have you ever tried, Laurie ? Where is it written that from your
judgment-place you have ever bestowed one word of sympathising
humanity 1 Where shall we find one expression that, for a moment,
linked your ineffable nature to the shivering misery at the bar—that
made you, in your Aldermanic dignity, take for one instant common
ground with forlorn wretchedness—with sorrow, stung by scorpion
wrong into despair ? AVhere shall we read of this f That it it
written, yea, in a thousand leaves, we doubt not. We only ask—
where ? Are the records )et extant; or, like the wisdom of the
Sybil, is the wise humanity of a Laurie scattered to the winds 1

anti l)t harti no iimtht she hjoulrj bz Crausuurtttf.

Who shall say that the hard duty of an Alderman has not still its
rewarding consolation i Yes ; it is something after a weary day's
labour at Guildhall to know, or at least to hope lor the transportation
of one broken heart. Sir James Graham has his luxury in the
expatriation of a Mary Furley. Wherefore, then, should not
Laurie grease his moral chin with a like savoury morsel ? When the
master has dined off the haunch, it is hard if the lackey be denied
kit little bit of marrowy fat.

And then, how passing pleasant to the spirit I when the day is
done, and the Alderman is making up his soul for the night—when
with serious looks and composed thoughts he has prayed for daily
bread,—passing sweet must it be, as a Laurie sinks into his
eider, to know that the fruit of his past day's wisdom may be the
transportation of some forlorn woman, driven to error by the want of
that bread whose very superflux makes the race of Lauries alder-
men. Surely these are thoughts that in the solemn night must sing
the brain and heart to rest, even as the songs of angels I

Had a common biped, one of the unrecognised million, uttered the
words—wise as they are—of Laurie, we should have passed them
as unheeded breath. But it is the dress of authority that makes
Laurie remarkable ; that attracts the eyes and ears of the world. We
can, in some way, parallel his position by a very recent example.

On the evening of the day that Laurie let fall his last pearl, Mm.
Barry, the clown at Astley's, embarked in a wash-tub on the
Thames, and was carried on his voyage from Vauxhall to Westmin-
ster by means of a pair of yoked geese. " Mr. Barry," say the
accounts, " appeared in his Cloicn't dress." Mr. Barry knows
human nature. Had he been simply habited, the attraction would
have been infinitely less. He would certainly have been associated
with the geese—perhaps, in the minds of the spectators confounded
with them—but he stood out to the eyes of men in his Zany's suit.
Now, what the whitened and vermilioned face—the many-coloured
dress—is to the Clown, so is authority, as employed by him, to Sir
Peter Laurie. The Clown's suit and the civic gown are to the eye
of moral philosophy one and the same thing. There is no distinction,
none, between the mountebank's flaring livery and the Aldermanic
violet and miniver. We might also parallel the geese. The Clown
owed his onward progress and the safety of his seat to the birds. Well,
there may be Aldermen who also owe their progress and their seats
to creatures of kindred sagacity. Yet, is there one difference
between the Clown and the City Magistrate. Mr. Merryman, in the
exuberance of his antics, may draw tears of laughter ; now the tears
excited by the Clown of the bench too often flow from a far different
source.

We have dwelt thus at length upon the peculiar merits of Sib