DOI Heft:
February 19, 1859
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16623#0079
February 19, 1859.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE.
" SOUND HIGH THE MAETIA1 STRAIN."
We submit: we ground pens: we cry for mercy: Scotland lias
conquered: Caledonia has found a vindicator : England may shut up !
John Marshall has settled her hash.—Yes, " John Marshall,"
—for so he writes his name; not" Maiitial," as one might expect, alike
from his epigrammatic point, and his command of mditary history; not
even " MauischAl -." as one who must surely be descended from the
Earl Marischal—that high officer of the Scottish Court in those
better days when Scotland had a court—is entitled to do: but plain
John Marshall,—correspondent of the Caledonian Mercury, who
thinking it high time that "the squeak of Punch should be deci-
sively encountered," proceeds to demolish our pock-pudding self, and,
in our person, all the irreverent scoffers who have dared to laugh at
the gallant asserters of Scottish nationality. It is ill handling the
thistle.
Anxious to give a wider publicity to Mr. Marshall's crushing
demonstration of the superiority of Scotland to England than the
columns of the Caledonian Mercury can secure for it, wc lay before our
readers the most striking passages of his letter.
Marshall proves that England is an appanage of Scotland, and not
vice versa:—
" I had the honour to be intimately acquainted with Sir Thomas Christopher
Banks, Bart., and Knight of the Holy Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the greatest
genealogist of the age, who died some four years ago, in his ninety-first year, whose
bones lie in Greenwich Churchyard, and whose works are to be found in folio and
quarto, in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. In the course of a conversation with
him on this subject, he told me that he considered England to be an appanage of
Scotland, and not Scotland an appanage of England ; and in this opinion I cordially
concur."
We bow to Banks, the Knight Hospitaller, of ninety-one, whose
bones sleep in Greenwich Churchyard, and his books in the Advo-
cates' Library. May the dust of both be undisturbed!
What Banks considered a fact, and Marshall cordially concurs in,
may be safely taken for granted.
Marshall proves that Scotland has no cause to be ashamed of herself:—
"The Times and other English journals sneer at Scotland; but Scotland can
afford to be sneered at. The land which gave birth to Wallace and Bruce, to Scott,
to Hogg, to Chambers, to Wilson, to Aytoun, and to Burns, to the Ramsay who
ruled India, to the Bruce who has brought the hitherto intractable Chinese to
reason, and to the Campbell whose sagacity, and prudence, and valour, have saved
the British Empire from overthrow in India, may stand eroct among the nations,
and has no cause to be ashamed of the position which it occupies."
Marshall proves that the Scots Greys saved Europe.-—
" Who were thcv that took the lead in stemming the torrent of the despotism of
Napoleon the Great at Waterloo ? They were the Scots Greys. ' These terrible
Greys ! was the exclamation of Napoleon when he saw that even his Imperial,
and, as he fondly thought, invincible Guard, went down before the sons of Lochabcr,
and the children of the country which boasts of Schehallion and the glories of
Lochnavar. By one who was present and engaged on that bloody day, i wss t«ki
that at one point of the battle the conflict was fiercely raging, when a command was
given, ' Make way for the Greys.' The order was obeyed. The infantry parted
right and left. The war-horses of the Greys marched through the space opcnei: for
them with steady and martial tramp. They met the French : and, in ten min tea,
the French were cut to pieces."
Marshall proves that England has no national poet; no national,
music ; no national song • that all her odes, history, and metaphysics, are
written by Scotchmen:—
" Notwithstanding the greatness of her Shakspeare, and her Milton, England,
Sir, has not, in the proper sense of the word, a national poet. Scotland has ; e he
has Burns. England has neither national music nor national song. Scotland has
both. In the whole range of her poetic literature, will England find anything to
equal ' Scots wka hae wi' Wallace bled,' or the 'Cotter's Saturday Night?' Can she
match ' Avid Lang Syne ? '—a song which is sung with enthusiasm, in far and dis-
tant lands, by every man who has drawn his first breath at the foot of the Gram-
pians, near the waters of the Boon, or on the banks of the Tweed.
" There are two magnificent odes of which England boasts, ' Ye Mariners of
England' and the ' Battle of the Baltic '—but who wrote them ? a Scotsman. That
Scotsman was Thomas Campbell, the author of the ' Pleasures of Hope.'
" When England required her history to be written, she sent to Scotland for an
historian. That historian was Hume. Macaulay, whose brilliant history lias
recently appeared, is a Scotsman. Dugald Stewart was a Scotsman ; and it is 1 rut
as yesterday since Sir William Hamilton, the first metaphysician in Europe, passed
away. Sir David Brewster and Robert Chambers, men of world-wide celebrity
still survive to surround with a halo of lustre the name of their country. And yet
we are told by the Times that Scotland is nothing more than is the fenny county of
Lincoln, or the bullock-feeding county of York."
Marshall smashes England generally, and raise* up Scotland upon the
ruins :—
"The ignorance of England is notorious; the intellectuality and educational
acquirements of Scotland are proverbial. One half of the inhabitants 01 England
are unable either to read or write ; in Scotland there is not a cow-boy nor a i.....si -
maid who cannot read the Bible, and lift the pen to communicate with a distant
friend."
Marshall retorts with a crushing sarcasm the English calumny that
Scotchmen always move southwards:—
" The English are in the habit of taunting Scotsmen with going into England and
of never returning to their own land. There are many thousands of EngUshi en
who crossed the Tweed and took up their abode at a place called Bannockburn, ai s\
who have remained there for upwards of threo hundred years without the sijj. i i! e: ;
appearance of their revisiting the land of their fathers till the day of doom."
Even Marshall is merciful. The Battle of Bannockburn having been
fought a.d. 1314, Marshall modestly describes the interval between
that date and 1859, as "upwards of three hundred years." He is too
magnanimous, doubtless, to insist on the fact that the English
intruders have in truth, been trespassing on the Scottish soil for
nearly twice three hundred years.
When people ask us to go in for "oppressed nationalities," let us
hope, that in future, we shall not be asked to confine our sympathies
to Poland, or Lombardy, or Hungary, or the Ionian Islands. Let us
think of Marshall, and spare a sigh for Scotland, trampled under foot
by the base and bloody Southron: its national Doric degraded from
the language of a Court, a Senate and a Literature, to a provincial
dialect: its national bag-pipe reduced to the rank of a street nuisance,
and even its fiddle all but unknown beyond the casual ward of the
workhouse; its national haggis made the theme of Punch's ribald
pencil; and the memory of its national poet ignominiously paraded to
draw Southron shillings from Southron pockets, at Sydenham.
Under the stings of accumulated wrongs like these, surely Marshall is
justified in reviving the memory of the bloodiest of those bloody
fields in which the mutual hatred of Scot and Southron was ventechin
hard lance-thrusts, and murderous arrow-flights, instead of being
voided by push of pen, and fire of paper pellets, in the Caledonian
Mercury.
THE SOCIALITY OE SOCIALISM.
We read in our " facetious contemporary," the Saturday Review, that
St. Simon, when he married, returned to Paris, and—
" Wishin_
human character
months in a scries of balls.'1
This apostle, independent of his being a Socialist, must have been a
great original; in fact, so great an original that we fancy we are
justified in pronouncing him to have been the real Simon Pure—pu>,
et (exceedingly) Simple! .
As we are indebted to our "facetious contemporary for having led
us to the above discovery, he is perfectly welcome to the benefit ol
it on any future occasion.
to turn the occasion offered by married life into a means of studying
ctcr on a large scale, he spent the whole of his fortune within twelve
Courage Always Meets with its own Reward.
" Never be faint-hearted. Have plenty of pluck, my Son. Sup
posing the whole world is against you ? Never mind, go in and fight
the entire world. The world is so formed, that you are sure to beat it
hollow ! "—The Hermit of the Eaymarket.
THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE.
" SOUND HIGH THE MAETIA1 STRAIN."
We submit: we ground pens: we cry for mercy: Scotland lias
conquered: Caledonia has found a vindicator : England may shut up !
John Marshall has settled her hash.—Yes, " John Marshall,"
—for so he writes his name; not" Maiitial," as one might expect, alike
from his epigrammatic point, and his command of mditary history; not
even " MauischAl -." as one who must surely be descended from the
Earl Marischal—that high officer of the Scottish Court in those
better days when Scotland had a court—is entitled to do: but plain
John Marshall,—correspondent of the Caledonian Mercury, who
thinking it high time that "the squeak of Punch should be deci-
sively encountered," proceeds to demolish our pock-pudding self, and,
in our person, all the irreverent scoffers who have dared to laugh at
the gallant asserters of Scottish nationality. It is ill handling the
thistle.
Anxious to give a wider publicity to Mr. Marshall's crushing
demonstration of the superiority of Scotland to England than the
columns of the Caledonian Mercury can secure for it, wc lay before our
readers the most striking passages of his letter.
Marshall proves that England is an appanage of Scotland, and not
vice versa:—
" I had the honour to be intimately acquainted with Sir Thomas Christopher
Banks, Bart., and Knight of the Holy Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the greatest
genealogist of the age, who died some four years ago, in his ninety-first year, whose
bones lie in Greenwich Churchyard, and whose works are to be found in folio and
quarto, in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. In the course of a conversation with
him on this subject, he told me that he considered England to be an appanage of
Scotland, and not Scotland an appanage of England ; and in this opinion I cordially
concur."
We bow to Banks, the Knight Hospitaller, of ninety-one, whose
bones sleep in Greenwich Churchyard, and his books in the Advo-
cates' Library. May the dust of both be undisturbed!
What Banks considered a fact, and Marshall cordially concurs in,
may be safely taken for granted.
Marshall proves that Scotland has no cause to be ashamed of herself:—
"The Times and other English journals sneer at Scotland; but Scotland can
afford to be sneered at. The land which gave birth to Wallace and Bruce, to Scott,
to Hogg, to Chambers, to Wilson, to Aytoun, and to Burns, to the Ramsay who
ruled India, to the Bruce who has brought the hitherto intractable Chinese to
reason, and to the Campbell whose sagacity, and prudence, and valour, have saved
the British Empire from overthrow in India, may stand eroct among the nations,
and has no cause to be ashamed of the position which it occupies."
Marshall proves that the Scots Greys saved Europe.-—
" Who were thcv that took the lead in stemming the torrent of the despotism of
Napoleon the Great at Waterloo ? They were the Scots Greys. ' These terrible
Greys ! was the exclamation of Napoleon when he saw that even his Imperial,
and, as he fondly thought, invincible Guard, went down before the sons of Lochabcr,
and the children of the country which boasts of Schehallion and the glories of
Lochnavar. By one who was present and engaged on that bloody day, i wss t«ki
that at one point of the battle the conflict was fiercely raging, when a command was
given, ' Make way for the Greys.' The order was obeyed. The infantry parted
right and left. The war-horses of the Greys marched through the space opcnei: for
them with steady and martial tramp. They met the French : and, in ten min tea,
the French were cut to pieces."
Marshall proves that England has no national poet; no national,
music ; no national song • that all her odes, history, and metaphysics, are
written by Scotchmen:—
" Notwithstanding the greatness of her Shakspeare, and her Milton, England,
Sir, has not, in the proper sense of the word, a national poet. Scotland has ; e he
has Burns. England has neither national music nor national song. Scotland has
both. In the whole range of her poetic literature, will England find anything to
equal ' Scots wka hae wi' Wallace bled,' or the 'Cotter's Saturday Night?' Can she
match ' Avid Lang Syne ? '—a song which is sung with enthusiasm, in far and dis-
tant lands, by every man who has drawn his first breath at the foot of the Gram-
pians, near the waters of the Boon, or on the banks of the Tweed.
" There are two magnificent odes of which England boasts, ' Ye Mariners of
England' and the ' Battle of the Baltic '—but who wrote them ? a Scotsman. That
Scotsman was Thomas Campbell, the author of the ' Pleasures of Hope.'
" When England required her history to be written, she sent to Scotland for an
historian. That historian was Hume. Macaulay, whose brilliant history lias
recently appeared, is a Scotsman. Dugald Stewart was a Scotsman ; and it is 1 rut
as yesterday since Sir William Hamilton, the first metaphysician in Europe, passed
away. Sir David Brewster and Robert Chambers, men of world-wide celebrity
still survive to surround with a halo of lustre the name of their country. And yet
we are told by the Times that Scotland is nothing more than is the fenny county of
Lincoln, or the bullock-feeding county of York."
Marshall smashes England generally, and raise* up Scotland upon the
ruins :—
"The ignorance of England is notorious; the intellectuality and educational
acquirements of Scotland are proverbial. One half of the inhabitants 01 England
are unable either to read or write ; in Scotland there is not a cow-boy nor a i.....si -
maid who cannot read the Bible, and lift the pen to communicate with a distant
friend."
Marshall retorts with a crushing sarcasm the English calumny that
Scotchmen always move southwards:—
" The English are in the habit of taunting Scotsmen with going into England and
of never returning to their own land. There are many thousands of EngUshi en
who crossed the Tweed and took up their abode at a place called Bannockburn, ai s\
who have remained there for upwards of threo hundred years without the sijj. i i! e: ;
appearance of their revisiting the land of their fathers till the day of doom."
Even Marshall is merciful. The Battle of Bannockburn having been
fought a.d. 1314, Marshall modestly describes the interval between
that date and 1859, as "upwards of three hundred years." He is too
magnanimous, doubtless, to insist on the fact that the English
intruders have in truth, been trespassing on the Scottish soil for
nearly twice three hundred years.
When people ask us to go in for "oppressed nationalities," let us
hope, that in future, we shall not be asked to confine our sympathies
to Poland, or Lombardy, or Hungary, or the Ionian Islands. Let us
think of Marshall, and spare a sigh for Scotland, trampled under foot
by the base and bloody Southron: its national Doric degraded from
the language of a Court, a Senate and a Literature, to a provincial
dialect: its national bag-pipe reduced to the rank of a street nuisance,
and even its fiddle all but unknown beyond the casual ward of the
workhouse; its national haggis made the theme of Punch's ribald
pencil; and the memory of its national poet ignominiously paraded to
draw Southron shillings from Southron pockets, at Sydenham.
Under the stings of accumulated wrongs like these, surely Marshall is
justified in reviving the memory of the bloodiest of those bloody
fields in which the mutual hatred of Scot and Southron was ventechin
hard lance-thrusts, and murderous arrow-flights, instead of being
voided by push of pen, and fire of paper pellets, in the Caledonian
Mercury.
THE SOCIALITY OE SOCIALISM.
We read in our " facetious contemporary," the Saturday Review, that
St. Simon, when he married, returned to Paris, and—
" Wishin_
human character
months in a scries of balls.'1
This apostle, independent of his being a Socialist, must have been a
great original; in fact, so great an original that we fancy we are
justified in pronouncing him to have been the real Simon Pure—pu>,
et (exceedingly) Simple! .
As we are indebted to our "facetious contemporary for having led
us to the above discovery, he is perfectly welcome to the benefit ol
it on any future occasion.
to turn the occasion offered by married life into a means of studying
ctcr on a large scale, he spent the whole of his fortune within twelve
Courage Always Meets with its own Reward.
" Never be faint-hearted. Have plenty of pluck, my Son. Sup
posing the whole world is against you ? Never mind, go in and fight
the entire world. The world is so formed, that you are sure to beat it
hollow ! "—The Hermit of the Eaymarket.