Punch (35.1858)

DsOfSMBER LI, i85b.j

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

233

THANK YOU FOR NOTHING.

JERUSALEM AND ROME.

eally when the Eaiperor A Deputation of gentlemen of the Hebrew
ov France does the mer- persuasion, headed by Mr. Moss, waited yester-
ciful thing, he does it j day on Mr. Pmch, to request him to use the
handsomely. To say no- , yasfc influence which he possesses over the Pope,
thing of his full pardon ; in order to persuade his Holiness to cause young
of Montalemrert, who j Mortara to be restored from the bosom of the

Church to that of his family.

Mr. Punch cordially shook hands with the
deputation, and said he sympathised warmly
with their feelings towards the bereaved Mor-
taras ; but that, after the remonstrances which
that he has further ex- j had been addressed to the Court of Rome by the
tended his clemency to chief Roman Catholic powers, he was almost
Gomez, the accomplice : afraid that his further interference would be
of Orsini—and how do productive of little effect. He would recom-
you think? By direct- mend the deputation to apply to their powerful
ing that he is to be brethren the leading capitalists of Europe, and
liberated on the Sardi- to obtain from them au engagement not to lend
nian frontier. J the Pope any more money at any per-centage

until he surrendered the little Jew.

The Deputation concisely thanked Mr. Punch,
and slunk out.

had been just found
guilty, on the clearest
evidence, of the heinous
offence of speaking the
truth, we are informed

This reminds Mr.
Punch of the process by
which his neighbour
Jones used to get rid of
his snails. Being fond
of cabbages, Jones felt
it his duty to take the
snails into custody ; but

beiDg a humane man, he silent on the Mortara case of Papal kidnapping,
used to " extend his : The object of this decree is the consolidation of
clemency " to them by j the Empire, which, it is hoped, will be effected
liberating them on Mr. j with Roman Cement. Prance would perhaps
Punch's frontier, alias, pitching them out of his own garden into Mr. Punch's. I prefer Plaster of Paris.

Imperial Masonry.

The French Press has been ordered to be

mup t vrrTAM tit?ct> \ t,/"ilt tat "pttt t at least, the household virtues of his daughter, and, like Nausicaa,

liiHj .LIllUiN UHiOrAIL/JT 11\ X VIjL. have washed the family linen, without caUing upon Europe to witness

Thanks to our Utile bird in the Colonial Office (not Mr. Welling- j*f foulness. Her .Majesty's Government had not anticipated, that

ton Guernsey) we are enabled to lay before a hungrily expectant
public the passages of the great Lytton Despatch which were omitted

the factions, whose bitterness, in the Corcyra of the Peloponnesian
Campaign, had taxed the pen of a Thucydides, would, in this, our

from the c6py officially made public. more philosophic day, have called forth the reprobation of one who,

After expressing the hope-(see published despatch)-that " with jdld.he ™* "verence Thucydides so profoundly, might also venture
time and forbearance the supposed jealousies of race would vanish 5° inscribe his, own name on the emblazoned and undying roll of
amid congenial institutions and common interests." Sir E. B. Hellenic Historians The senators of the Isles of Greece will surely

Lytton's powerful manifesto, in the copy sent to Sir John Young,
proceeds as follows :—

" That a race, individually gifted, however weak politically—
the seignory of which has passed through so many and various
phases, from the iron sceptre of the Macedonian conqueror to the
law-reverencing fasces of Imperial Rome, and tnence, from the
enervate grasp of the degenerate Byzantine to the stern but glorious
guardianship of the Lion of Saint Mark and the tortuous tyranny of
the Muscovite, that Byzantine of the eighteenth century, in whom,
alone among the nations, the craft of Constantinople has not ex-
cluded the sternness of the Scyth, and the rapacity of the Roxolane—
that such a race—alternately the oppressed or the Cross, and the deci-
mated of the Scymitar—should chafe under the mild incidence of
British rule is a phenomenon which might well provoke the incredulity,
if it did not engender the risibility, of the historic student. But in the
contemplation of the Real we must suspend our reverence for The
Abstract; and submit ourselves to the stern dominion of The Fact,
even when it conflicts most with the Siren-like suggestions of The
Idea.

" The Beautiful has ever found her favourite home among the purple
islands of the Blue iEgean, but the Rational has spurned those seduc-
tive shores for the more inclement regions of the north. From the
wave that crisps along the yellow sands of Cythera arose the Homeric
Aphrodite—the Foam-born—and fancy still loves to trace in The Actual,
the faint but fascinating traces of The Mythic. Aphrodite—the daughter
of the foam—stiH haunts these shores, but no longer as the Incarnation
of The Beautiful. As an embodiment of The Unreal she disports her-
self in the senate of Corfu, and paints the bright but impossible future
of a Septinsular Republic, upon the bubbles blown by the breath of a
Press too soon set free, while she floats forward before the popular
breezes unwisely fanned into an occasionally tempestuous existence by
the Seton Constitution of 1849.

"Her Majesty's Government have viewed with iegret these unex-
pected results of a policy, which, if it partook largely of The Rash,
cannnot surely be refused the praise justly due to The Confiding. From
ground still hallowed by the recollections of the Garden of Alcinous,
they had hoped for fruits less repulsive in rind, and less acrid in
flavour. They had fondly imagined, that the descendants of those who
owned the gentle sway of the Phoeacian monarch would have imitated,

pardon me for reminding them that it cannot be grateful to the author
of Athens and the Athenians, to be chosen as the organ for conveying
to them the opinion of England and the English upon their councils
and their conduct. But they will not, I trust, confound the language
of advice, however unwelcome, with that of Ill-will, however justifiable.
If Eros led the passionate poetess of Hellas to the white rocks of
Leucadia, affection for the Hellene may well urge the Colonial
Secretary of England to sacrifice popularity on the altar of Truth.
Sappho sank but to sing again. If the waves of septinsular execration
close for awhile.over the name of Lytton, I may still look for comfort
to the fate of Sappho, and bear my barbiton aloft, amid the Scyllean
howl of Corcyrean execration, and the turbid outpourings of anonymous
detraction.

"But Her Majesty's Government would appeal to the gentler
elements of the Hellenic race, which still, they would fain hope, find a
home where Odysseus garnered the wisdom culled in a life-harvest of
travel and anthropologic observation, and where Eum^eus practised
the contemplative occupation of guardian of the Royal Swine. They
trust they are not unreasonable in their hope that the power of
drawing the long bow is not the only legacy left to his descendants
by the sagacious Basileus of Ithaca, and that Her Majesty's Go-
vernment may find some better precedent for action in this crisis
than that furnished by the constant and cautious Penelope, for undoing
in 1859 the web woven with such pains by the Lord High Commis-
sioner, in the first year of the decade which is about to expire, since
the Seton Constitution was bestowed."

The despatch then continues, as printed:—

"These are tlie general principles and sentiments entertained by Her Majesty's Go-
vernment with reference to the questions which at present agitate the Ionian mind, "&c.

It is believed that the omission of the passage we have supplied is
due to the narrow notion of Sir John Young and Mr. Bowen, that
as it was unintelligible to them, it was not likely to produce any
wholesome effect upon the Ionian Senate.

They seem to have forgotten that what a scholar and a poet writes
to the collective wisdom of a Hellenic people may be—indeed ought to
be—Greek, and therefore when Sir John states—as he is understood
coarsely to have stated—that the omitted passage was " so much
heathen Greek to him," he was pronouncing at once its highest eulogy
and most conclusive justification.