PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

51

DEFEAT OF THE JEWS BY LORD NELSON.

E have a Nelson still who
fights for our homes and
altars; for the gallant and
reverend Earl ennobled by
Trafalgar has led the van
against the Hebrew host,
now thundering at the gates
of Parliament. The old shot-
pierced coat of Nelson lies
a bit of moth-eaten woollen
in Greenwich Hospital; but
the indomitable will that
worked beneath it animates
and inspires the parson Earl
of the House of Lords.
Heroically beautiful was
Nelson, "flaming on the quarter" of the Spanish three-decker; no
less " lovelily dreadful" was the Nelson still spared to us, boarding
the Synagogue! When shall his triumph be celebrated at Exeter Hall ?
When shall white-robed virgins sing his praises—when shall rejoicing
elders chant his name ? True it is—according to our Nelson—that,
" the Legislature was not now bond fide Christian." And—

" The relations between the Church and the State had been greatly shaken by this
circumstance, and was it right to add to this source of danger at a time like the
present ? "

No doubt of it: the relations have been shaken. There has been such
pushing and jostling by certain folks for thousands and tens of thousands
—all eager as scrambling boys for nuts—that the relations have been
shaken; the pillars of Church and State have somewhat rocked. And
then our Nelson thunders this question—

" If they admitted the Jews, where would they stop?"

Where, indeed ? The Emperor or China—for purposes best known
to himself—may swamp the House of Commons with flowery members
from the Flowery Country. The Sultan—of course in collusion with
the traitorous Palmerston—may send a score of Mahometans —(think
of the fez in St. Stephen's!)—for no other purpose than to beard
Slbthorp himself with their bigotry. Nay, the King- of Dahomey may
forward his Africans (a Colonel or two of his Amazonian Light Horse,
cunningly; disguised for the occasion,) to advocate his own particular
interests in the slave trade.

" Where would they stop ?" How far-seeing, how profound, the
human interests involved in this question! And how comforting to
remember, that the time-hallowed query has never_ been in abeyance !
The Ancient Briton, when he doubted of mere paint as his only wear,
was met by the awful interrogation of his more ancient countryman—
"What! dress in wolf-skins! Where will you stop?" "Travel ten
miles an hour by railway, Mr. Stephenson ! Bless us and save us !
Where will you stop ? " " What! Cover eighteen acres of Hyde Park
with a skeleton of iron and a body of glass, that shall not be rolled up like
a scroll by the first gale of wind—shall not be broken to atoms by the
first storm of hail. Where, where, Mr. Paxton, will you stop ? "

It is a great comfort, a great conservative delight, to know that the
world—in its worst barrenness of great men—has ever a supply of
those sages endued with the unerring sagacity that can compass a
question. " Where will you stop ? " In the infancy of every society,
when the first step is made—there was ever a wondering grannam to
exclaim—" Where will you stop ? " And so the world went on. The
waggon asked it of the mail-coach—the mail-coach of the railway-
tram—the railway-train of the electric telegraph, and—as an astounding
climax of interrogatives, the Reverend Earl Nelson of the audacious
Lord John Russell—" Where will you stop ? "

The Earl, moreover, clenched his argument against toleration of the
Jews—(when Jews were no longer mulcted of their grinders or their
money; doubtless some Nelson of the middle ages, marvelling at the
clemency, asked—" Where will you stop ?")—that the world at large
cared nothing for the Hebrew. Certainly, we anticipate no riot from
the fact that the Jew Bill has been defeated: Christians will not
fraternise with the denizens of the Minories, and march upon the
Lords. Nelson's windows are safe ; nor will he be given to the flames,
in effigy, in Holywell Street or Houndsditch. But the Lords' majority
will not settle the question. Still Mordecai will sit on the steps—
sit and sit on the outside—until society insists that he be allowed to
take his seat in the Commons.

_ Meanwhile Earl Nelson believes that the people care not for
justice to the Jew: and in such case leave the people to the enjoyment
of their indifference. For, if you do justice an hour before you are
coerced into the act, what comes next? "What! be just of your own
accord ! " Where will you stoD ? "

A TBAGEDY IN HIGH LIFE!

Our friends the French have some reputation for proficiency in a
particular branch of industry not represented in Hyde Park—that is,
Punch was going to say, in dramatic literature ; but the days of Racine,
and Corneille, and Moliere have departed. Well; say, instead,
that they are considered to be rather clever playwrights. At any rate,
the article which they manufacture competes successfully in the market
with British produce; and a new tragedy from Paris holds, presumably,
a decent rank among imports. Such a commodity has recently arrived in
this country, and may be pronounced to be a very pretty piece of goods.

MM. Auguste Maquet and Jules Lacroix are the fabricators of
this work, which they call " A Drama, in Five Acts, in Verse." Being
of a dismal and melancholy nature, with a suicide for the catastrophe,
it lias thus all the elements of genuine tragedy, except that the verse
in which its five acts are written is not poetical. In remarking on a
production of a tragic nature, Mr. Punch may be thought to step a
little out of his way; but not so—no: there are some tragedies which
are strictly in it. There is the Pyramus and Thisbe of MM. Quince
and Bottom ; there is also the Valeria of MM. Maquet and Lacroix.

Valeria, the heroine of this nice play, is the wife of the Emperor
Claudius. The lady so denominated is called by her second name—
her first having acquired an odour of which the ventilation of more than
eighteen hundred years has failed to deprive_ it. MM. Lacroix and
Maquet are evidently not the sort of dramatists to apprehend the fact
that the nomenclature of a rose does not affect its fragrance, nor to
understand the converse of that Shakspearian proposition. The
subject of their glorification is better known by her primary appellation
of Messalina.

The history of the person alluded to is in general so sufficiently noto-
rious, that, for further particulars, the reader who does not understand
Latin, is referred to the sixth satire of Juvenal, where he will find an
account of the conduct of Mrs. Claudius as intelligible as it is proper
that he should be presented with.

He may, however, be informed, that, according to Juvenal, Mrs.
Claudius played her pranks under the, assumed name of Ltcisca. On
this foundation our Gallic dramatists have built. They have repre-
sented Valeria (that is, Mrs. Claudius) and Lycisca as two persons,
only bearing an extraordinary personal resemblance to one another;
whence it happens that the acts and deeds of the " tiling of naught"
get attributed to the amiable and interesting Empress.

So far, perhaps, there is nothing in this but an eccentric taste,—a
taste in French dramatic writing allied to that sometimes shown in
French confectionery. The idea of making a heroine out of a Messa-
lina, Punch takes to have been conceived by the same kind of imagina-
tion as that which devises sweetmeats in the form of loathsome insects,
and the like; apparently regarding both interest and appetite as stimu-
lated by the suggestion of the abominable.

But the peculiar manner in which MM. Maquet and Lacroix
whiten their Roman sepulchre with their French stucco, merits farther
notice. Valeria (Mrs. Claudius) is rendered a pattern of affection
and fidelity to—another gentleman than her lord and Emperor. As for
old Claudius, her relation to him is about as sacred as that of a ward
to an imbecile old guardian in an English farce. The sentimental
affinity of Valeria to Silius is coolly taken as constituting her appeal
to the sympathies.

The points—to use a technical phrase—in the tragedy of Valeria are
not numerous, amounting just to one; and that one has not the com-
pensating advantage of being select. It is a scene in which Lycisca, the
courtesan, gets tipsy, after the manner of the ancients, in a revel with
Mnester, a pantomime dancer.

When the Bishop of London has been told that the play above
described has been acted in this town, his Lordship will probably
wonder at the progress which he will imagine the French language
must have been making in the Metropolitan slums, and will be, perhaps,
for bringing a bill before the Peers for the better regulation of tavern
playhouses. Valeria, however, has been played no farther out of the
Bishop's particular beat than the St. James's Theatre. Rachel sus-
tained the several characters of Valeria and Lycisca, and certainly wore
her two pairs of buskins as well as their fit would allow. She appa-
rently delighted large and fashionable audiences; and she certainly
interposed her genius between the arms of Morpheus and Mr. Punch.

Well, at any rate, the emancipation of the stage is now safe. Now
that Valeria has been allowed to be enacted, what possible performance
will be prohibited on the ground of its moral tendency ? The office of
Dramatic Censor will of course be henceforth a sinecure—the sole
function of the Licenser of Plays will be to confer boundless license.

An Aldermanic Salute for the Artillery Company.

The reason the " H. A. C." was excluded from the Guildhall
Entertainment was, because the Aldermen and Common Councilmen
thought such " great guns " of themselves, that it did not require the
aid of any other Artillery to make the Ball go off well.