Punch: Punch (39.1860)

September 1, 18G0.] PUNCH, Oil THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

!

“ And all to no good!—’Ere she’s out of the Wood
There’s India sets up her halloo,

And stakes her advance upon Wilson’s finance,

And making one army of two.

The Reform Hustings-cry is put quietly hv ;

Law-Amendments hung up, like waste-paper, to dry ;

The Bankruptcy Bill’s fallen through.

“ Oh, sure such a Session of empty profession.

So barren of work dared or done,

Old England saw never since Montfort’s endeavour
Her earliest Parliament won.

Such waste and such weariness, dulness and dreariness.

As Report and Debate in the readin’ and bearin’ is,
l never have gone through for one !

“ ’Gainst, taste and time sinners, with this last of dinners
Your circle of blunders you crown—

And come here to eat Whitebait, our claims when we quite bate,
To be worth e’en the fork of a clown.

When we come here in dudgeon, as large as coarse gudgeon,
To be battered and devilled by some curst curmudgeon,

For snobs who spend August in Town 1 ”

TIT-BITS FROM THE “ TABLET.^

ietimes a dig into the Tablet
Homan Catholic newspaper will
reward the humorous explorer
with many absurdities. Subjoined
are a few gems of precious quality
and various kind, derived, all of
them, from the mine formed by the
last number of that wonderful
journal. The first, to be sure,
occurs in a letter from Rome,
quoted from the Cork Examiner.
It relates to the “Pope’s Own;”
the soldiers of the Irish Brigade
in Rome : of whom its author thus
reports:—

“ I can say that one is struck by their
religious attitude, not a nominal but a
genuine one fsono religiosi non di nome
ma di opera).”

These Irish are, of course, en-
thusiastic papists. The religious
attitude of such devotees is very
peculiar. An idea of it may be
obtained by an inspection of the
pictures of saints exhibited in the
windows of Roman Catholic book-
shops. Many of the canonised
gentlemen and ladies are delineated praying with twisted necks or
dislocated limbs, in quite miraculous postures. One species of the
religious attitude displayed by those pious but grotesque personages
is that of ogling a skull, another that of making an obeisance to an
image precisely similar to the curtsey which ballet-dancers are accus-
tomed to drop before pachas and princes, apparently meaning, “ See
how submissive I am, and at the same time how very interesting and
pretty I look.” Considering this last variety of the religious atti-
tude in question, one might almost suppose that a joke was intended
by the statement that the Pope’s Irish soldiers are religious “nondi
nome ma di opera.”

The next good thing lies in the simplicity with which the desire
quoted verbally in the following piece of foreign intelligence is treated
us something extraordinary:—

“ At one of the late public feasts in Modena, the astonished population read the
following inscription inscribed by the scholars on a brilliant transparency “ Vog-
liamo la vera Religione senza Papa e senza Preti.’—‘ We wish true Religion without
either Pope or Priests.’”

As if this wish were a very unreasonable or very novel one.

Finally the Tablet treats us to the ensuing outbreak, in which a
-emarkable strength of language will perhaps be considered to be
curiously blended with a corresponding weakness in every other respect
but that of bigotry

“ We are not prepared to deny that there may be a diabolical cunning and an
infernal sagacity in the policy pursued by which Napoleon the Third has been
ontbidden and overreached, and by which the Italian revolution, unchained by him
£or his own selfish purposes, has been converted into a danger and a difficulty tor
him from which it is hard to discover any means of escape.”

Grant that the policy of wishing the deliverance of Italy from caps
of silence, noisome dungeons, bastinado, hot-bottomed chairs, and
Bourbonic and Austrian rule which rests on these appliances, together

with papal domination, which is allied with that of Bourbon and Haps-
burg, is diabolical and infernal. Admit that the policy is altogether
iufernal and diabolical, still where is the cunning of it? Did England
ever make a secret of its desire to see the pontifical despotism and the
absolute monarchy of Naples abolished ? Is it particularly cunning, at
least, to go about roaring “No Popery!” or chalking that popular
exclamation up openly on the walls ? Infernal straightforwardness and
diabolical downrightness are the sins of which the Tablet should accuse
British policy. Our outraseous contemporary perhaps regards as a
master-stroke of diabolical cunning on the part of Lord Palmerston
and Lord John Russell the Government’s connivance at the enlist-
ment of the poor Paddies who went out, to fight the Pope’s battles for
a consideration which proved to be “monkey’s allowance,” and who
have returned wiser and leaner men, and ragamuffins more squalid than
they were when they started. This result the Tablet may believe to
have been contrived by the Ministry with the diabolically cunning
and infernally. sagacious view of destroying the confidence of the
faithful Irish in their priesthood, and thus as it were diminishing the
verdure of Erin, or opening the eyes of Hibernia and abating the green
in them.

A SONG BY A SABLE SCEPTIC.

Me go to Swarry oder night,

To see de man fly out ob sight:

By spirits he would rise, dey said,

But first de room must dark be made.

Chorus.

Sich a gettin’ up a stare, and a playin’ de accordion :
Sich a gettin’ up a stare, wheu nobody cau see !

De table first dey try to turn,

And bery soon de dodge I learn:

You move de knee beneath, and so
De table’s taught to jump Jim Crow !

Chorus. Sich a gettin’ up a stare, &c.

De spirit-hand it next appear,

And how dey work de ting is clear,

Of wax or wood de hand is made,

And by de phosph’rus light displayed.

Chorus. Sich a gettin’ up a stare, &c.

An accordion on de ground dere lay,

Which all at once him ’gan to play :

P’raps de spirits don’t know dere are such tings
As de snuff-boxes dat, play by springs.

Chorus. Sicfi a gettin’ up a stare, &c.

And den de fools dey gape and stare
To see de floatin’ in de air.

But though it look a human figger,

De fact is doubtful to dis nigger.

Chorus. Sich a gettin’ up a stare, &c.

For first of all dey dowse de gas,

De window den de form it pass ;

But what de figger really be
’Tis difficult in de dark to see !

Chorus. Sich a gettiu’ up a stare, &c.

But if dis child some oder night
Go see de Spirit-movin’ sight.

Him take a spirit-lamp, and so
Some light, upon de subject throw !

Chorus. Sich a gettiu’ up a stare, See.

A GEM FROM THE EMERALD ISLE.

Redundancies in writing are not considered elegant: and in
advertisements especially they are to be avoided, for unnecessary words
are not printed without cost. Had the writer of the following borne
this fact in mind, he would not. have afforded us a laugh at his expense,
which luxury we enjoyed on Thursday the 9th ultimo:—

INQUIRY.—D. A. S., late of Dublin, is earnestly requested, by his
Irish correspondent in Paris, to WRITE lit living), regardless ul circumstances,
20th of June being long since passed.

There is something so Hibernian in requesting that a person will
please to write “if living,” that the advertiser scarcely need have said
that he was “Irish,” the fact being quite patent from the two words
introduced. Whether these two words cost the writer something
extra, we need not waste our space in endeavouring to guess: but if
t hey did, he will at least have this great consolation, that without them
what he wrote would not have gained a place in Punch.