Punch: Punch (32.1857)

April 4, 1857.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

131

Studious Boy. '-Johnny!—I advise you not to be a Good Boy \"
Johnny. " Why ?"

EXCESS OE APPAREL.
A Remonstrance.

'Tis not that thou art fond of dress,

Dearest, that I at all complain,
[ do not wish that fondness less,

I like, I want thee to be vain ;
Nay, that thy charms might heightened be

By every means, I would implore,
So that they might enrapture me,

And make me love thee still the more.

'Tis for those very charms of thine,

By Fashion wronged, that I appeal,
Through muslin clouds they cannot shine ;

Dress should adorn, and not conceal;
The present mode may suit the Hags,

Or Matrons of the Grampus kind.
Of clothes they all look best as bags,

Puffed out before, at sides, behind.

But what avails it thee to own,

A form of symmetry and grace,
With drapery round thee so outblown

That I can only see thy face ?
The angel that thou art, appear,

Nor longer so thy figure hide,
As if then wert a cherub mere,

That has a face—and nought beside.

Bomba's Revenge.

A. Creatuke of Bomba's, one Bajano, a policeman, has
invented a new torturing apparatus; a machine which
gags, by choking the victim. This devil's toy is used to
inflict a kind of torture called the tortura del siletiztc. The
miscreant underling may have devised this diabolical con-
trivance ; but the idea of it was no doubt suggested by his
absolute master. Enraged because France and England
will not speak to him, he thinks to visit their silence on
bis unhappy prisoners.

" Habitans in Sicco."—Thieves have been stripping the
roofs of some of the city churches of the lead. Wantonly

Studious Boy. " Because in Books all Good Boys die, toc Know !" I wicked, when there is so much given in the sermons.

" YtS, 'TIS THE SPELL!"

We learn from the Report of the Civil Service Examiners, who have
done the State much civil service by their nipping in the bud whole
groves of inefficiency, which might have otherwise been added to the
Woods and Forests, and have increased the woodiness of the Admi-
ralty and other Governmental boards,—we learn, we say, from a lately
published Blue, or we might rather call it Black Book that one of the
chief causes of rejection with the candidates was the badness of their
spelling^ Of this the instances which are quoted, for our anything but
satisfaction, are as singular as they are plural; and we especially are
struck with the ingenious varieties which we find have been devised
for spelling the same words. It would puzzle a John Thomas to dis-
cover seven ways of writing the word "grievances" without once
hitting on the right one: yet this feat of cacography has lately been
accomplished; and it would seem the "Mediterranean" has proved
a Rubicon that very many of the Candidates have been unable
to get oyer, since we see no less than fourteen methods of mis-
spelling it.

These results might not unreasonably perhaps have been anticipated
in examining the junior classes of a Ragged School; but, we cannot help
allowing, that the Commissioners are justified in their expression of
astonishment, that grown up Candidates for Civil Service should have
shown so little previous acquaintance with their spelling books. Nor
can it much increase one's reverence for what is known in common
parlance as a gentlemanly education," when one hears that—

" Out of sixty-six sons of noblemen and gentlemen who -were rejected, forty-four
per cent, were for incapacity to spell their own language."

The better then the birth, the worse would seem the spelling. But,
however much this may have astonished the Commissioners, it is no
surprise to us. We think, though, that the system is at fault much
more than those who suffer for it. We have no wish to speak lightly
of a liberal education, if we say that to our view there is something
radically wrong in it. We were at a public school ourselves; and
however great our progress may have been with the dead languages,

we but little added to our knowledge of the living ones. Our masters
stood by far too high as classicists to stoop to teach us common
English, and so long as we continued pubbc scholars we had to consult
our spelling books in private.

Yet at ten years of age, which were ours when we entered, we could
hardly have acquired that perfect mastery of English which it appa-
rently was taken quite for granted we possessed, since no attempt was
made to cure our imperfections.

Now without undervaluing our classical attainments, we must say
that we still find our English quite as useful to us as our Latin; and
we had far less rather lose our knowledge of orthography, than part
with our ability to give the paradigm of -rvirrw. To write the word
" grievances" with a false quantity of letters seems to us a greatei
heinousness than even making a false quantity in scanning a penta-
meter : and it is probable that the employes of a British Government
will more often have the opportunity of showing off the former than
the latter feat of scholarship. But so long as English schools teach
chiefly Greek and Latin, and a knowledge of orthography is assumed
to come by instinct, so long will "finished" scholars be found en-
gulphed and quite at sea in spelling "Mediterranean," and Civil
Candidates use words that almost Billingsgate would blush at.

ROTHSCHILD'S TIME BARGAIN.

Baron Rothschild made a time bargain with the citizens of
London. If, again championed by an increased majority in the
Commons, he is again rejected by the Lords, the Baron "will not
hesitate in immediately placing his seat" at the disposal^ of the
electors. According to the olden Cabalists, everything that is and is
to be is written in Hebrew on the face of the Heavens, if a sage can
only be found wise enough to read it. Is no such sage among the
London remnant of Israel ? It cannot be said of " the people " what
Macbeth avouches of Banquo, that "there is no speculation" in their
eyes; and such being the case, how easy to read upon the face of the
sky whether the Baron's time bargain is for a rise or a fall.