DOI Heft:
April 5, 1862
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16869#0140
132
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[April 5, 1862.
Ballet of Action with which Sparkles (who says he is so hard at work at his Picture), and his Friend arad Model, Jack Bounce, refresh
themselves m the intervals of labour.
MERRY AND DREARY ENGLAND.
“ Mr. Punch,
“ The lamentable statement subjoined has perhaps met your
eye, and extracted a tear from it, as it did from mine. Inasmuch as it
appeared in more than one morning paper, no doubt it has spoiled the
breakfast of many a lover of nature :—
“ Enclosures.—The Enclosure Commission report that the following proposed
enclosures are expedient, and that a Bill will be prepared for sanctioning them :—
2,500 acres in the township of Kirkoswald, Cumberland ; 82 acres in the parish ot
Great Am well. Herts ; Llanfechell Mountain, Anglesey, containing 282 acres ; waste
land of the manor of Huntingfield, Suffolk, about 59 acres ; about 600 acres in the
parish of Chigwell, formerly part of Hainault Forest; 170 acres at Wouldham, Kent;
Thingwall Common, Cheshire, 25 acres; Plenmeller Common, Northumberland,
3,128 acres; Barking Common allotments, 529 acres; and Dagenham Common
allotments, Essex, 43 acres. These ten enclosures amount together to 7,41S acres.
The commissioners state that since the passing of the Acts (in 1845) enclosures of
389,188 acres have been confirmed.”
“ All this enclosure of waste lands, so called, that_ is to say the
conversion of so much wild country into cultivated soil and building-
ground is very melancholy- There will soon not be an acre of heather
and gorse, of forest, swamp, or snipe-bog, in all England. One half of
the face of the earth will be crowded with human dwellings, coated
mostly with stucco and compo, intermixed with smoky factories and
still worse nuisances, and the other half covered with agricultural
produce ; corn, kohl-rabi and mangold wurzel, or overspread with the
guano, or its native equivalent, whence that produce will be raised to
fatten cattle and feed human beings little above the cattle. For what,
much better than animals, are the human beings likely to be, amply
provided with bodily meat and drink, but destitute of needful spiritual
refreshment ? How are you to have any poet, when the wild prim-
roses, cowslips, violets, cuckoo-flowers, marsh-marigolds, dog-roses,
woodbine, brambles, ferns, lichens, mosses, oak, elm, beech, ash, and
other timber, woodland, cover, thicket, and hedgerow, bog, swamp,
morass, and mountain wilderness, are all gone ? ‘We don’t vyant
poets ’ says your shrewd man of business and so does your man of the
world, who thinks, with poor purblind old Johnson, that a grove of
chimneys is better than a grove of trees, who likes the hum, and indeed
the humbug, of men better than the hum of bees, has no reverence for
the sylvan gods, but worships his own stomach daily at his club.
These fellows may not want poets to help them get money, or cook for
them and otherwise pamper their bodily appetites; but, not wanting
poets, they are incipient brutes, and their posterity, without any poets
whatever to keep humanity up in them, will ultimately descend nearly
to a level with the beasts—not of the field but—of the stye. They will
become, as it were, pigs; creatures that, when turned out in a forest,
see nothing in it but the acorns and mast which they hunt among the
fallen leaves, and the roots which they turn up with their snouts out of
the earth. Their very features will most probably by degrees acquire
a hoggish type, so that their eyes at last will come to be set obliquely
in their heads, the British cast of countenance resembling the Chinese;
all along of the want of poets and the extirpation of poetry from the
British soul, occasioned by the total enclosure of waste lands.
“ Don’t tell me that the more numerous population the soil can be
made to support, the better. Quantity may be obtained at the expense
of quality. I am a lover of my species, but had rather not be confined
with a large number of them in a small place. A crowd makes the
atmosphere sultry. That of England is getting so, and if I had to live
much longer, it would soon get too hot to hold me. Already it is
growing difficult to find fresh air, and the trout-streams are fast be-
coming open sewers. The wild animals are nearly all extinct; there
are no vermin but rats, mice, and pettifoggers. Oh, yes! I am behind
my age, I knoiv—averse to progress. To be sure. I am, Mr. Punch,
averse to progress which is simply degeneration; but I also am your
regular subscriber,
“ Toadsdale, March, 1862.” “ Smeleungus.”
A Generous Idea.
“ A’m told a Mr. Peabody,” remarked a Swell, “ has appwopwiated
a hundwed-and-fiftv thousand pounds towawds ameliowating the con-
dition of the London paw. A hundwed-and-fifty thousand pounds!
Half that sum would make my wife and children happy, if a wa’ mar-
wied, and—a—twice as match would make me tolewably comfatable.”
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[April 5, 1862.
Ballet of Action with which Sparkles (who says he is so hard at work at his Picture), and his Friend arad Model, Jack Bounce, refresh
themselves m the intervals of labour.
MERRY AND DREARY ENGLAND.
“ Mr. Punch,
“ The lamentable statement subjoined has perhaps met your
eye, and extracted a tear from it, as it did from mine. Inasmuch as it
appeared in more than one morning paper, no doubt it has spoiled the
breakfast of many a lover of nature :—
“ Enclosures.—The Enclosure Commission report that the following proposed
enclosures are expedient, and that a Bill will be prepared for sanctioning them :—
2,500 acres in the township of Kirkoswald, Cumberland ; 82 acres in the parish ot
Great Am well. Herts ; Llanfechell Mountain, Anglesey, containing 282 acres ; waste
land of the manor of Huntingfield, Suffolk, about 59 acres ; about 600 acres in the
parish of Chigwell, formerly part of Hainault Forest; 170 acres at Wouldham, Kent;
Thingwall Common, Cheshire, 25 acres; Plenmeller Common, Northumberland,
3,128 acres; Barking Common allotments, 529 acres; and Dagenham Common
allotments, Essex, 43 acres. These ten enclosures amount together to 7,41S acres.
The commissioners state that since the passing of the Acts (in 1845) enclosures of
389,188 acres have been confirmed.”
“ All this enclosure of waste lands, so called, that_ is to say the
conversion of so much wild country into cultivated soil and building-
ground is very melancholy- There will soon not be an acre of heather
and gorse, of forest, swamp, or snipe-bog, in all England. One half of
the face of the earth will be crowded with human dwellings, coated
mostly with stucco and compo, intermixed with smoky factories and
still worse nuisances, and the other half covered with agricultural
produce ; corn, kohl-rabi and mangold wurzel, or overspread with the
guano, or its native equivalent, whence that produce will be raised to
fatten cattle and feed human beings little above the cattle. For what,
much better than animals, are the human beings likely to be, amply
provided with bodily meat and drink, but destitute of needful spiritual
refreshment ? How are you to have any poet, when the wild prim-
roses, cowslips, violets, cuckoo-flowers, marsh-marigolds, dog-roses,
woodbine, brambles, ferns, lichens, mosses, oak, elm, beech, ash, and
other timber, woodland, cover, thicket, and hedgerow, bog, swamp,
morass, and mountain wilderness, are all gone ? ‘We don’t vyant
poets ’ says your shrewd man of business and so does your man of the
world, who thinks, with poor purblind old Johnson, that a grove of
chimneys is better than a grove of trees, who likes the hum, and indeed
the humbug, of men better than the hum of bees, has no reverence for
the sylvan gods, but worships his own stomach daily at his club.
These fellows may not want poets to help them get money, or cook for
them and otherwise pamper their bodily appetites; but, not wanting
poets, they are incipient brutes, and their posterity, without any poets
whatever to keep humanity up in them, will ultimately descend nearly
to a level with the beasts—not of the field but—of the stye. They will
become, as it were, pigs; creatures that, when turned out in a forest,
see nothing in it but the acorns and mast which they hunt among the
fallen leaves, and the roots which they turn up with their snouts out of
the earth. Their very features will most probably by degrees acquire
a hoggish type, so that their eyes at last will come to be set obliquely
in their heads, the British cast of countenance resembling the Chinese;
all along of the want of poets and the extirpation of poetry from the
British soul, occasioned by the total enclosure of waste lands.
“ Don’t tell me that the more numerous population the soil can be
made to support, the better. Quantity may be obtained at the expense
of quality. I am a lover of my species, but had rather not be confined
with a large number of them in a small place. A crowd makes the
atmosphere sultry. That of England is getting so, and if I had to live
much longer, it would soon get too hot to hold me. Already it is
growing difficult to find fresh air, and the trout-streams are fast be-
coming open sewers. The wild animals are nearly all extinct; there
are no vermin but rats, mice, and pettifoggers. Oh, yes! I am behind
my age, I knoiv—averse to progress. To be sure. I am, Mr. Punch,
averse to progress which is simply degeneration; but I also am your
regular subscriber,
“ Toadsdale, March, 1862.” “ Smeleungus.”
A Generous Idea.
“ A’m told a Mr. Peabody,” remarked a Swell, “ has appwopwiated
a hundwed-and-fiftv thousand pounds towawds ameliowating the con-
dition of the London paw. A hundwed-and-fifty thousand pounds!
Half that sum would make my wife and children happy, if a wa’ mar-
wied, and—a—twice as match would make me tolewably comfatable.”