Punch: Punch (33.1857)

2o6 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [December 19, 1857.

FLU N K£ IAN A RUSTICA.

Mistress. " Now, i do hope, SaJIUEL, you WILL make yourself tidy, get your gloth
laid IN time — axd TAKE GREAT pains with your WAITING AT TaBLE ! "

Samuel (who has come recently out of a Strawyaid). " Yez, M'! But Pleaz, M', be oi to
wear my Breeches?"

MR. PUNCH'S HUMANITY.

One Hockeey Wood, an attorney, seems
to have been utterly flabbergliasted at a major
and a minor proposition set before him, last week
by Lord Mayor. Carden. Hockley had been
acting for some people who were making an
unjust charge of felony; and the case having
proved rotten, the Mayor observed that it was
"monstrous that any solicitor should undertake
such a case." This speech presented a new idea
to Mr. Wood, who m his utter bewilderment
remarked that, " any solicitor must undertake
any case that is brought to him, so long as he is
on the rolls." The Mayor begged not only to
contradict Wood, but to add that no respectable
solicitor would have undertaken such a case as
that? And he discharged the prisoner, the
audience "cheering loudly." We think Sir
Robert was a little hard on Wood. Perhaps
it was really the first time he iiad ever heard
that any work that is paid for is regarded by
society as too dirty for an attorney. His legal
education was incomplete. We do not think
that ignorance should be treated so harshly.
Now that Mr. Wood has had a hint, he will
apply a new test to cases in which he may be
retained, and " bless the useful light" held to
him by the Mayor. We have compassion for
everything, even an attorney, and would gladly
help Hockley Wood out of what a facetious
archaeologist would call Hockley Hole.

Paper and Bronze.

The great Prussian Sculptor, Christian
Rauch, has departed, full of honours. His
splendid monument to Frederic the Great
will endure as long as earth worships conquerors
—perhaps longer. To the same man Thomas
Carlyle has just completed another memorial.
We wonder which is the heavier.

AN ACT OF CONTINENTAL GRACE.

It may be well occasionally to desist awhile from our habitual
practice of ridiculing our own British absurdities, in order to anim-
advert, with playful derision, on those of our Continental neighbours.
The subjoined telegram from Madrid is a piece of intelligence which
will excite the laughter of every rational Englishman :—

" The Prince has been baptized.

" An amnesty has been granted tor political offences, and to persons condemned
to light punishments."

That any excuse for pardoning political offenders may be a good one
in Spain, is possible enough; but what reason is afforded by the
baptism of a royal baby for remitting the punishments of common
offenders ? What a set of fools we should have thought Her
Majesty's Ministers, if, on the occasion of our last Royal christening,
the Home Secretary had ordered all the convicts under sentence for
petty larceny to be let out of gaol! Rogues are punished for the pro-
tection of the public; and all remission of the punishment of such
offenders is an abatement of that protection.

To signalize a baptism by the amnesty of pickpockets, is to increase
the general liability to the loss of pocket-handkerchiefs, and to make
that solemnity an occasion for indulging the worse portion of the
people to the detriment of the better.

There is a very particular reason why the inconsistent and irrational
doings of foreigners should be carefully held up to the ridicule of the
British Public. A set of boobies, who affect what they call cosmo-
politan ideas, are continually trying to persuade their hearers and
readers to regard the silly manners and foolish customs, and prepos-
terous act.s, of other nations in a liberal point of view : that is to ignore
their imbecility, fatuity, folly, immorality and injustice. Such people
would have us consider almost any of the practices of all natives
whomsoever, iu a "spirit of toleration" as their cant phrase is, and
would desire us to acquiesce in all, and imitate many, of the various
zanyisms, idiotisms, and tomfooleries of the rest of the world. Let
us, on the contrary, preserve our insular peculiarities, while they ape
all manner of childish Continentalisms, or, going farther still, paint
their faces sky-blue and red, and dance, howling, after the fashion of
Great Ribbed-Nose Yahoo, and Rusty Tomahawk.

A MITRE IN BETHNAL GREEN.

Divers Bishops, in lawn, and in the richer livery of the Scarlet Lady,
have, at fitting times, received in these pages such castigation as erring
hierarchs deserve. But what are we to say of the new Bishop of
London, Dr. Tait? Truly he is a scandal. This man has been down
among the dirty and squalid people of Bethnal Green, for the purpose, as
he says, of making himself acquainted with their condition. More,
he specially invited them to come to a church, whence he did his best
to exclude on that occasion (by what right, we should like to know,)
respectable folks. And he, the Bishop, a Lord in the House of Lords,
preached to these unclean creatures, and with his own lips (not even
filtering the doctrine through a clean chaplain) pressed upon them his
views for their welfare. He told them not to indulge in dreamy
notions about a heaven up in cloud-land, but assured them that there
would be a tangible new earth, on which should be neither sin, poverty,
nor sorrow, and he gave them certain advice as to qualifying themselves
for it. And hundreds of these creatures expressed their thankfulness.
This sort of thing wdl not do. We can't have seedy-minded Bishops.
We are happy to know that, painful as the task may be, Dr. Wilber-
eorce has undertaken to remonstrate with the eccentric Dr. Tait, and
remind his Lordship of what he owes to his order. Luckily neither on
a Bishop's mitre nor a Baron's coronet are there leaves, or we should
have trembled for their fate among the silkworms.

Relief for Rich and Poor.

The suspension of the stringent provision of the Bank Charter Act
has relieved the dealers in money. Could not the stringent provisions
of the Poor Law be slightly relaxed, also, in favour of the destitute,
thrown out of employment by the crisis ? Surely Government and the
legislature will not play fast and loose: loose with the discount-houses,
and fast with the workhouses !

Orthography eor Tailors.—Sydenham Trousers, 17s. 6d.! Go
where you will, you encounter a placard or a poster relative to-
Sydenham Trousers. Sydenham !—why Sydenham ? Don't the people
know how to spell? Shouldn't it be Sit-in-'em ?