Punch: Punch (32.1857)

98

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[March 7, 1857.

A. CHALLENGE.

We wager six haunches of Southdown mutton against twelve buf-
falo's humps, that an English postman will go through more rapping
on St. Valentine's Day than an American spiritualist on all the other
days of the year put together; and moreover, that a medium (either in
the shape of a cook, or a housemaid, or a young or elderly, lady)
shall answer in every case, and answer, too, at the very first rap,
without keeping the spirit-rapper waiting longer than is just necessary
for him to spell his letters. If our Yankee spiritualists decline this
challenge, we shall infer that there is no longer any spirit left in them.

GESLER'S HAT.

Once upon a time, the spirit of Switzerland, working in the unbon-
neted William Tell, looked defiance at Gesler's Hat, stuck upon a
pole, to test the manhood of a free people. And now Switzerland
sends her children—or permits them to depart and take livery in the
odious service—to mount guard about the pole, and to compel men,
women, and children, to do servile obedience to the Pope's triple
•^rown, to the double diadem of the Two Sicilies. Pity is it, that
Switzerland, who knows so well how to be free at home, has become a
bye-word and a proverb as the nursing mother of a family of flunkeys,
with plush in their souls, with their very minds in livery, devoted to
take wages from the blood-dropping hands of a Perdinand, to eat the
dirty bread of a Pius the Ninth.

Oh, Helvetian lion, and must it be ever thus ? It was bad enough
when you were turned into a poodle for the Kings of Prance; and
when, watching faithfully, and biting bravely, you were knocked on
the head by republican clubs one very noisy day in Paris. Poodle as
you were—the leonine majesty clipped closely as any caniche on the
Pont Neuf—you died game; and Thorwaldsen has carved you,
restoring the leonine form, in everlasting rock, great lion of Lucerne.
The mighty Dane has cast the sentiment of fidelity about your dying
moments ; the arrow has sped to the vital place ; the thick blood oozes
round the shaft; and the leonine paws, the claws tangled in its folds,
grasp with the grip of death the lilied flag of Prance. Down went
the Bastille ! And Helvetia's lion—in that bloody time of Paris—what
was it more than a butchered calf? Indeed, of not so much service-
able account as so much dead veal in which were the probabilities of
many a fricandeau !

And now, transformed to a shepherd's dog, the Helvetian Lion is
the hired property of the Pastor of the Seven Hills ; and worries the
sheep—for the Shepherd thinks it good that his flock should know the
teeth of the dog—and, all for their health's sake, even bites the
little lambs.

In Naples, the lion of Helvetia, turned to a blood-hound, has lost its

roar, and hunts silently as coming death. Ill-favoured, sinister beast!
It carries a golden collar charged with the arms of the Two Sicilies ;
and licks its jaws red with man-hunting. And was this beast bred in
the mountain-home of Switzerland ? Was this badged brute of
slaughter a thing of the land of Tell ? A thing to be patted by the
hand of Bomba, and fed upon his scraps ?

Will Switzerland remain silent ? Will she not, with the voice of an
indignant mother, call back her children, or denounce them as hkelings
for blood—as turnkeys and torturers for daily wages P Will she
consent to share in the shame of tyranny by licensing its instruments ?
Let us see to what iniquities Switzerland, in the person of her soldiers
—her despot's guards upon blood-wages—lends herself and ministers.
How fare the Neapolitan state prisoners in the castle of Monte Sarchio
where Bomba keeps his victims, as the ogre Polyphemus kept his
supplies, to be devoured in due season ? How goes it with Poerio ?
With the undaunted man, stubborn to the death in his championship
of truth and right? Well, Poerio—with manacled body—has lost
one eye; total blindness is fast coming on, speeded by racking
rheumatism, and a cough so deep, so wearing, that it might almost
move the bowels of the king gaoler, Perdinand himself. Nevertheless,
Switzerland continues at once the guard and turnkey of well-nigh
extinguished Poerio. Switzerland with her eagle glance of freedom,
can accustom her eyes to the charnel darkness of a dungeon; and still
have vision sufficient to see that her wages are no counterfeit, but of
the right metal. Switzerland, with her ear attuned to foaming cata-
racts and bounding streams, can critically listen, when she rings her
homicidal wages, to know if the coin be of the right and true musical
vibration.

Besides Poerio there is Schiavoni, also blind of one eye; and threat-
ened with blindness total as the stone-blindness of Perdinand's heart.
One Steno—by last accounts sent to the minister of merry England—
has no stomach for prison fare, all food being rejected. Vincenzo Dono
has been on the rack of rheumatism for five months ; Nisco is tortured
by incessant pains of the stomach; and Alphonso Zeuli, aged twenty-
four, died of consumption • and died in chains. In chains, Switzerland!
But still he rebelliously died; there being no possible gag or barring-
iron to keep in the rebel soul that, haply, flew accusingly to God,
accusingly of the monster who holds bloody carnival with his own
thoughts at Caserta. Near Zeuli, lay Pirroti, a judge in chains, and
almost motionless as a corpse. Justice in manacles ; and Switzerland,
in the persons of her children, keeping hireling guard of the victim of
the blasphemer!

We will not pause to look into the Boraan dungeons, with locks
turned by the keys of St. Peter-Pius. We will not count the harried,
bitten, half-flayed sheep—the ruddled property, for is not the cross
upon their backs ?—of the pastoral Pope. Enough that he has hireling
dogs from the mountains and valleys of Switzerland, the vaunted home
of freedom, albeit the breeding-places of the liveried lackeys, and the
ready-money slaves of tyrants.

Can Switzerland, in the face of this reproach—a reproach, eating
canker-like into her fair name—can Switzerland pause ere she calls
back her Swiss from Borne, her Swiss from Naples; and being called,
and coming not—ere she fails to cast them off and for ever to denounce
them—no children of hers but bought and sold soulless carcases, the
working-tools of tyrants ?

If Switzerland will not do this, let us hear no more of the Helvetian
Lion. Por with Swiss guards at Borne, with Swiss guards at Naples,
truly for the Helvetian Lion we must have the Helvetian Hyena.

The Advantage of Earnestness.

It would perhaps be going too far to say, that nothing could have
exceeded the eloquence of the Earl op Derby's appeal to the House
of Lords in general, and the Bishops in particular, on behalf of the
peaceable, much-enduring, honest, straightforward, mdd, gentle, for-
bearing, barbarously outraged Chinese. The noble Earl would have
made a much more spirited and energetic speech, if the rupture at
Canton had occurred under an Administration of his own, and if,
therefore, he had been obliged to speak on the other side of the
question.

Mr. Gladstone's Game.

Mr. Gladstone has been playing a deep game of chess. Under
cover of attacking the Premier's Castle or Tower of Strength, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, the honourable Puseyite is sup-
posed to have been really manoeuvring with a view to cheek Lord
Palmerston's (Low Church) Bishops.

LOST.—A few nights ago, somewhere in the House of Commons, the
self-command of a late Right Hon. Chancellor of the Ex—q—er. The Right
Hon. Gentleman is well-assured that he carried the article about him until a late
hour of the evening ; when it must have accidentally fallen from him in the heat of
debate. a handsome reward will be given to whosoever shall restore the article in
question, as it is more than probable that its late owner will, in the course of the
next few months, have the most pressing need of it.