Punch (42.1862)

Mat 3, 1862.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

175

A MART FOR ART.

Just opposite
tiie Great Ex-
hibition certain
enterprising per-
sons have estab-
lished a smaller
one. It is called
the International
Bazaar, and is
intended, we un-
derstand, as a
place where,
when a person
has seen any-
thing in the Big
Show that he
would like to

buy, lie may go and perform that feat, as the Bazaar is to contain its own
specimens of all portable productions. We intend to buy an Armstrong
Gun, a locomotive, a ring of church bells, and a Shoeburyness target, the
very first day, as little presents for young lady friends. We think the
Bazaar notion a very good one, and perfectly in keeping with the legiti-
mate objects of the Great Show, and the place is fitted up, by a Erench
decorative artist, in a very elegant fashion. Mr. Punch's own smoking
saloon is not much more tastefully adorned with flags and banners. But
why do not the promoters of the Bazaar complete the rivalry, issue a
proclamation (we’ll lend them a Lindley Murray), andliave an inaugura-
tion, an ode, and a procession ? Mr. Punch would run over and take a
part in the proceedings, and would write to Mu. Tupper to do a poem
at the shortest notice. Then we would have it set, and get up a little
quarrel on the subject, and Herr Von Joel, who might be engaged
(with his whistling baton) to conduct, might refuse to conduct one of the
polkas, and the manager would have to engage somebody else for the
purpose. Mb. Spurgeon might come over and enact the Archbishop,
and though Bromptou might find it as difficult to find a second Duke
op Cambridge as Lambeth does to find a second W. Williams, the
thing is not impossible. We hear that the refreshment department at
the Bazaar is to be managed in capital style, and this is wise—men’s
hearts open, and so do their purses, as wives know, after a good lunch,
and we would bet that most purchases are made after one o’clock. We
have no idea whether the Bazaar notion originated in a freak, but the
notion itself is an extremely sensible one, and Punch hereby crowns it
with success.

THE CRY EOR CONSERVATIVES.

The Tories once, as well is known,

Stood by the Altar and the Throne,

In point of Church their views were High :

But their principle was evermore “No Popery ! ”

When Catholics, with rights denied,

Had reason clearly on their side.

The Tories, till their throats were dry,

Were accustomed to vociferate, “ No Popery ! ”

But now that common cause unites
The Papists and the Derbyites :

’Tis time for Punch to raise the cry,

Of Lord Palmerston for ever and “ No Popery!

THE IRON AGE AELOAT.

There seems very little doubt that steam and iron will between
them turn the sailors of our Navy into stokers and sea-soldiers, and
effect a revolution in the commonest naval matters. If the Merrimac
and Monitor be taken as our models, our fleet will soon consist of
mastless iron ships, and anything like seamanship of course will not be
needed in them. The duties of a sailor on board a ship of war will
be confined to work between decks, such as cleaning out the stoke hole
and keeping a good fire up. He will no more be roused out to reef
topsails, for there will be none to reef; nor will he ever have to go
aloft and hang on by his eyelids, as, if we credit the sea-novelists, he
used formerly to do.

Besides, when ships are without masts, of course the men on board
of them can no more be mastheaded, and martinets will have to turn
their minds to hit upon some other form of punishment. Eunnel-
heading would perhaps be a fit thing to introduce, and men might be
sent up to sit upon the chimney-top until they were well smoked. We
can fancy what a picture a young middy would present, after dangling
his legs upon the funnel for an hour or two. Even if he had the fortune
to escape suffocation, he would very certainly be soon as black in the

face as though he had been choked. On the whole we think that
chimney-potting, as it might be called, would be quite as efficacious
and unpleasant as mastheading, and the middies will no doubt much
thank us for suggesting it.

A SNUFFLE FROM A SAINT.

To the Editor of the “ Record''

“Yerily, my dear friend, we live in dreadful times. Calamity and
innovation (words to my mind quite synonymous) attack us on all sides.
One wonders what new danger to the State will next afflict us. Why
here the theatres have actually been opened during Passion Week and
yet we still continue to be called a Christian nation! Painful to relate,
with your own pious exception, the Press have not protested, but
mostly have applauded this new act of iniquity. Hear, however, what
a Bishop—he of Oxford—has to say of it:—

‘ ‘ The present was an instance of the manner in which great evils were continually
creeping on. The introduction of the concert was now the plea for opening the
theatres altogether, and, now that the other days of Passion Week were given up,
the next step would be to give up Good Friday. This was the way in which all
reverence for holy seasons was swallowed up among us.”

“ Swallowed up ! yes alas ! We well know who it is that prome-
nades about the country like a devouring lion, and now that he has
swallowed up our reverence for Passion W eek, there really is no saying
what he next will make a meal of. Good Eriday will of course next year
be “ given up ” to him, and in the course of a brief time there will be no
such thing as Sunday. Playhouses will be open day and night through-
ont the year, and these vile dens of iniquity will ere long become so
numerous, that churches, chapels, and cathedrals will be pulled down
to make room for them. Playgoers may allege that hearing
Shakspeare is as morally improving to a man as seeing people risk
their necks on the trapeze, or indulging in a beery dance at a Casino.
Such resorts as these were until this year the only public pleasures
during Passion Week, that is to say for people who were resident in
London, for out of it the theatres were suffered to be open, being
licensed by the Magistrates and not by the Loro Chamberlain, in
whose keeping are the morals of all dwellers in Cockaigne. But a
Bishop must of course know better than a playgoer what goes on at a
theatre, and how much . less moral harm is done by Yirtuous Casinos
than by Yicious Comedies like those which Shakspeare wrote.

“ Sir, I never go to theatres, and as the closing of them cannot in
the least affect my comfort, I am strongly of opinion that at Christmas
time and Easter, and all other holy seasons, their doors ought to be
kept shut. Depend on it if playhouses are open during Passion Week,
something dreadful to the nation will happen before long. I leave to
Dr. Cumming to foretell what it will be, but I really quite expect to
live to see the time when our holy seasons will be treated so irreverently
that we shall no longer enjoy a Christmas pudding or a hot-cross bun.

“ Groaning in spirit for this fearful state of things,

“ Believe me, your afflicted,

“ Jeremiah Jowls.”

COSTUMES OE EEMALE NATIVES.

Japan has some name for polish, and its credit in that respect
appears to have been well sustained by the Japanese Ambassadors in
Paris, to whose good taste the correspondent of the Post at that eapital
bears the following testimony :—

“ They consider the ordinary Parisian modes a wicked and painful artifice for
deforming female loveliness, and think it would be a considerable improvement if
the Emperor Napoleon would issue a proclamation that no Crinoline should be
bought. One or two of the suite have bought specimens of these ‘ cage ’ abomina-
tions to take home as a specimen of the eccentricities of European civilisation.”

And so the detestable cages which depraved vanity has invented to
conceal three-quarters of a woman’s figure under a scaffolding for
drapery will be taken to Jeddo, and there, no doubt exhibited at the
Japanese Museum, if there is such an institution at that capital, just
as the barbarous trappings and accoutrements of Red Indians, Southsea
Islanders, and other savages, are shown at our own British. But the
Japanese Ambassadors are coming oyer here, and what will they think
of our position in the scale of humanity, when they find that the women
of England have also the bad taste to screen their fair proportions with
a mechanism of steel ? 01 course they will look upon the natives of
this island as a race still more degraded than the neighbours from
whom our most fashionable ladies have borrowed a barbarism. Ac-
customed as they are to regard “Happy Despatch” as a civilised
institution, they will surely wonder that we do not adopt that practice,
inasmuch as, in tolerating the cages of our wives and daughters, we
suffer female grace to commit suicide.

The World’s Eair.”—It’s not true (says a confirmed cynic), for
generally speaking the world’s extremely unfair.