Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH. OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 57

PUNCH'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

LETTER. IV.—ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.

My dear Ch:ld,—You say, you are anxious to select for yourself
•an agreeable and profitable profession, and solicit my paternal coun-
sel to assist you in your choice. This brings to my recollection, that
your darling mother once begged that I would accompany her to a
mercer's, to choose a gown. We entered the shop, and desired an
inspection of the warehouseman's commodities. Velvets—cut, flowered
and plain ; satins of all colours ; sarsnets ; silks, shot with thunder
and lightning, muslins, poplins, bombazeens, pompadours—all the
beautiful products of the loom were graciously taken from the
■shelves, and displayed upon the counter before us. Some two or
three hours were agreeably passed in this way ; when your dear
mother, with one of her sweetest smiles, thanked the shopmen for
their trouble, then said, "she thought she could only afford a ten-
penny gingham."

My dear boy,—I fear it will be thus with you in your choice of a
profession. I may, it is true, unroll an archbishop's lawn before you —
may call your earnest attention to a Lord Chancellor's ermine,—may
request you to feel the weighty bullion of a commander-in-chief's
epaulets,—to weigh in your hand the gold-headed cane of a court
physician—and when all this is done, you may call for the leather
apron of a cobler, or the goose and needle of a tailor.

I wish—and heaven witness my aspiration—that in your birth the
law of primogeniture had bound you apprentice to £15,000 per annum,
besides my good-will, when I slept beneath a slab of marble : such
a calling must be a very pretty business, aDd believe me, I should
have mightily liked to be your master. As fortune has ordered it
otherwise, let us look at the professions.

Will you enter the church?—Alas ! what a prospect lies before
you. (Jan you discipline your mind and body to fulfil the functions
of your office ? I will at once suppose you a bishop. Can you, I ask
it, satisfy your appetite with merely locusts and wild honey ? Will
you be content with raiment of sack-cloth, or at the best, linsey-
wolsey ; and can you answer for your conscience that you will, at all
times and in all weathers, be ready to make a pilgrimage to the
hovels of the poor ; to give comfort to the wretched ; to pray beside
the straw of the repentant guilty ; to show, by your own contempt of
the creature blessings of this world, that you look upon the earth as
a mere temporary tarrying-place,—a caravanserai where you are
awaiting until called beyond the clouds ? Consider it; as a bishop,
you will be expected to take your seat in the House of Lords. When

there, shall you be prepared, with the rest of your brethren, to set a J veloped itself in so many bright examples—you are compelled to

and with a voice of almost divine thunder wake in the callous hearts of
worldlings, a slumbering conscience for their fellow-men ? Will you
be in the House of Lords, a lump of episcopal camphor,—a bundle of
spikenard—a pot of honey ? Can you—as all bishops always do—
abstain from the lusts of Mammon, and keep your lawn, white and
candid as the wings of angels, from the yellow soil of filthy Plutus ?
Thinking only of the broadest, the shortest, and the best way to
heaven,—will you (like all bishops) never meddle with turnpike-acts,
nor job with wooden pavements ? Eschewing the vanity of coach
and footman (as John the Baptist did, and all bishops do) will yon
think only of the carriage of Elisha ; and turning from the pomps
and vanities of an episcopal palace, can you (as all bishops do) feed
humbly, lodge lowly,—hungering only for immortal manna,—waiting
only to be called to that home—

" Whose glory is the light of setting suns-"

My dear boy, examine yourself and say are you equal to all this !
I think you are my own flesh and blood, and thinking so, doubt your
constancy in this matter. Hence, I would advise you to eschew the
church ; for unless you could lead a life apostolical, as all bishops
always do, what disgrace would you bring upon the bench—what a
slander and a bye-word would you be in the mouths of the heathen !

Let us now consider the law, and suppose you called to the bar.
—Have you the fortune to support your dignity—have you, for this is
more, that gentleness of spirit, that philanthropy of soul, which would
make all men brothers, which would pluck from the hearts of your
fellow-creatures, malice and dissent, the foul hemlock and nightshade
that poison the sweet sources of human love ? Consider the change
that has come upon the law and its guileless professors. There was,
indeed, a golden time, when you might have amassed a fortune by
playing bo-peep with Truth ; by abusing, reviling her ; by showing
her virgin innocence to be strumpet infamy ; by plucking every
pinion from her sky-cleaving wing, and making her a wretch of sordid
earth ; by causing Truth herself to blush for her nakedness ; and
more, you might have successfully "moved the court" to punish her for
the indecent exposure ; and thus Truth, by the potency of your elo-
quence, might have been handed over to the scourging arm of the
beadle, whilst Falsehood, your successful client, should have gone
triumphant home, in a carriage-and-four, with white favours ! These
golden times are past. Then, you might have walked the Hall,
gowned and wigged with a harlot tongue to let for hire, carrying any
suit into court, as a porter carries any load ; then at the Old Bailey
you might even have shaken hands with avowed murder in his ceil,
and fresh from the blood-shot eye, and charnel breath of homicide, have
called heaven, and its angels, to witness to the purity of the cut-throat
who had paid you so many silver shillings for your exordium, your
metaphors, your peroration—your bullying of witnesses, your fierce
knocking at the startled hearts of half-bewildered jurymen ; threat-
ening the trembling twelve with midnight visits from the ghost of the
innocent creature in the dock, if the verdict went for hemp. This
you might hare done, but this is past. Now, Conscience wigs itself,
and sits with open door, giving advice gratis. Therefore, can you
afford it in purse ? and, more; have yrou the necessary milkyness
of humanity—for such is the term simpletons give it—to play the
peace-maker between man and man, giving advice, allaying feuds,
reconciling neighbour to neighbour, weighing out Justice in her
golden scales, and charging not one marivedi for her trouble ? Can
you, as barrister, write up over your door—as may now be seen in
thousands of places—" Advice given against going to law, gratis."

In the olden time, I should have advised you to make an effort for
the bar ; but with the present romantic notions—for I can give them
no worthier name—operating on the profession, you can afford it
neither in pocket nor in spirit. To such an extent have barristers
carried their peace-making quixotism (of course considerably assisted
by their worthier brethren, the attorneys), that the judges have
nothing to do. Already the moth is eating up the official ermine !

Will you be a soldier ?—Well, I will presume you are a Field-
Marshal. A war breaks out : a wicked, unjust war. It may be
thought necessary (such a case occurred about a century ago, and may
occur again) to cut the throats of a few thousands of Chinese ; for no
other reason than that the celestial Emperor hath, with his " vermilion
pencil," written an edict against the swallowing of British opium.
Well you are ordered for the Chinese waters, to blow up, burn, slay,
sink—in a word to commit all the beautiful varieties of mischief in-
vented by the devil's toy-woman, Madame Bellona. Well, with the
spirit that is now growing in the army—a spirit that has lately de-

^ontinual pattern of piety and self-denial to the lay-nobles ? Will you ' throw up in " sublime disgust," your Marshal's baton, and like Cincin-
be ever prompt—as bishops always are—to plead the cause of the i natus, retire to Battersea to cultivate cress and mustard ; philosophi-
-wretched ; to stand between the sinking poor and the arrogant rich ; cally preferring those pungent vegetables to laurels stained with the

Vol. 3.

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