DOI Heft:
July 7, 1866
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16878#0010
2
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[July 7, I860,
i
i
PARALYSING PIECE OF NEWS FOR MR. B.
Mrs. B. “Me. B. ! Me. B. ! ! Heee’s somebody been writing to the
Times to say that when the Banns have been put up after the Second
Lesson, the Marriage is an Illegal One, and consequently Void ! !
Why, that’s how WE were Married, Mr. B. ! ! Do you hear 1 ”
OUR COAL AND OUR COUNTRY.
Mr. Punch,
Grave fears have lately been expressed by grave men that our
coal measures will have been practically exhausted within two or three
generations. What, then, will Posterity do for force and for fuel P That
is the question which the Legislature is urged to consider by provident
and philosophical alarmists. It is a question relative to the subter-
ranean domains of England. But there is a parallel question, which
does not appear to have occurred to any of those prescient gentlemen.
What, in the meanwhile, will become of England’s superficies ?
Suppose that all our available coal is a quantity not sufficient to last
much above another century. But then suppose also that the gas-
works and factories and furnaces of England go on multiplying at their
present rate of increase. Suppose, too, that our population continues
to advance in the same ratio. If the bowels of the land are consumed
in a hundred years’ time, will not its face be likewise used up ? Will
not tliis Island, honeycombed underground with excavations in barren
rock, aboveground be clustered all over with towns, separated by small
interstices of utilised sewage ? And must not our rivers then receive
the surplus which it will be impossible to utilise ? Will not the merry
England that once was have become a hotbed studded with aggregations
of bricks and mortar, and channelled with gutters ? Will not our
herbage and foliage have been for the most part destroyed by the vitri-
olic fumes of chemical plants, and the remainder have been blackened
by factory smoke ? Is it not likely that Great Britain will be exploits
no sooner underneath than all over, and in short that our coal will not
fail a moment before it should ? On the other hand, is it not rather
possible that the country may be completely spoiled long ere the coal
that sustained its progress is nearly gone F
No alarmist myself, Mr. Bunch, I merely suggest one conceivable fear
to balance another. If we anticipate the exhaustion of our coal, we
may just as well expect the repletion of our space, and the consumma-
tion of our national career. For my part I fear neither one event nor
STRANDED.
{Thoughts, on the far side of the Rubicon, by the Right
Honourable W. G.)
Lo, here, across the Rubicon,
We gather, stranded, on the strand—
Behind us the wide stream runs on,
Before us lies the promised land,—
Tracts whose bright hues, far off, might please,
But, closer scanned, a desert seem:
No treasury-loaves upon the trees,
No treasury-fishes m the stream !
The natives flock, of looks uncouth,
And blatant speech—a salvage crew,
Not such as in my Oxford youth,
Or manhood’s Peelian prime I knew !
When Church and State—two schemes in one—
Loomed on my brain through morning haze,
And by the old ways I wandered on,
Nor dreamed of treading other ways !
They raise their war-cries’ shrilly screech,
Where our burnt boats bestrew the sand.
Dance round us, hail with rugged speech,
And wave rude Stars, with welcoming hand !
Not such the greetings I foresaw,
When dreaming, studious, in the schools,
Of Commons bowed to Canon’s law,
And Statesmen squared by Churchmen’s rules !
Are these the men with whom my fate
Is linked, since here my boats I burned ?
To this wild shriek of haste and hate,
Must my mellifluous tongue be turned ?
Must my wide vision shrink to theirs.
My vast horizon narrow in,
To this poor round of idol prayers,
And mob-led, or mob-leading, din ?
Bethink thee,—“ they are flesh and blood,”
Are brothers—asses though they be :
That progress points, where o’er the flood
Is shaped, I Rope, the great “to be.”
My boats are charred, the road is barred,
That backward leads across the stream—
Onward ! although the road seem hard,
Eor lights on the horizon beam!
the other. If the coal ever runs out, something equivalent to it will
doubtless turn up, or else turn down. Somebody will discover a cheap
way to set the Thames on fire, or to draw below, and store, atmospheric
electricity. By a system of vertical elevation instead of lateral exten-
sion, our architecture will be adapted to our area, and our cities, no
longer expanding, will continue to ascend. The higher they rise, the
less will Posterity be troubled with any amount of smoke which it may
be unable to consume. The future of England will then be as fresh as
a daisy, still as familiar a flower as ever, and will wear the same roseate
aspect as that under which it now7 presents itself to the exstatic vision
of an ever hopeful Optimist.
Hinnom Flace, Bethnal Green.
A Very Sly Sarcasm.
French satire is subtle. A contemporary states that:—
“ A ‘ communicated ’ note in the Evenement denies in somewhat indignant terms
that the Prince Imperial is about to study the art and mystery of typography.”
At first sight what there could have been, in an announcement that
the Prince Imperial was about to learn printing, to excite indignation,
may not be manifest. Perhaps it was the understood intimation, in an
ironical sense, that the Emperor was believed to intend making a
demonstration of respect for the Press.
Ernest Hart and the Sick Paupers.
Who says there’s nothing in a name
To mark the bearer’s part ?
Our bloated Bumbledom to tame
Demands an Brnest Hart.
The Fenian Movement in Canada.—To the Bight About.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[July 7, I860,
i
i
PARALYSING PIECE OF NEWS FOR MR. B.
Mrs. B. “Me. B. ! Me. B. ! ! Heee’s somebody been writing to the
Times to say that when the Banns have been put up after the Second
Lesson, the Marriage is an Illegal One, and consequently Void ! !
Why, that’s how WE were Married, Mr. B. ! ! Do you hear 1 ”
OUR COAL AND OUR COUNTRY.
Mr. Punch,
Grave fears have lately been expressed by grave men that our
coal measures will have been practically exhausted within two or three
generations. What, then, will Posterity do for force and for fuel P That
is the question which the Legislature is urged to consider by provident
and philosophical alarmists. It is a question relative to the subter-
ranean domains of England. But there is a parallel question, which
does not appear to have occurred to any of those prescient gentlemen.
What, in the meanwhile, will become of England’s superficies ?
Suppose that all our available coal is a quantity not sufficient to last
much above another century. But then suppose also that the gas-
works and factories and furnaces of England go on multiplying at their
present rate of increase. Suppose, too, that our population continues
to advance in the same ratio. If the bowels of the land are consumed
in a hundred years’ time, will not its face be likewise used up ? Will
not tliis Island, honeycombed underground with excavations in barren
rock, aboveground be clustered all over with towns, separated by small
interstices of utilised sewage ? And must not our rivers then receive
the surplus which it will be impossible to utilise ? Will not the merry
England that once was have become a hotbed studded with aggregations
of bricks and mortar, and channelled with gutters ? Will not our
herbage and foliage have been for the most part destroyed by the vitri-
olic fumes of chemical plants, and the remainder have been blackened
by factory smoke ? Is it not likely that Great Britain will be exploits
no sooner underneath than all over, and in short that our coal will not
fail a moment before it should ? On the other hand, is it not rather
possible that the country may be completely spoiled long ere the coal
that sustained its progress is nearly gone F
No alarmist myself, Mr. Bunch, I merely suggest one conceivable fear
to balance another. If we anticipate the exhaustion of our coal, we
may just as well expect the repletion of our space, and the consumma-
tion of our national career. For my part I fear neither one event nor
STRANDED.
{Thoughts, on the far side of the Rubicon, by the Right
Honourable W. G.)
Lo, here, across the Rubicon,
We gather, stranded, on the strand—
Behind us the wide stream runs on,
Before us lies the promised land,—
Tracts whose bright hues, far off, might please,
But, closer scanned, a desert seem:
No treasury-loaves upon the trees,
No treasury-fishes m the stream !
The natives flock, of looks uncouth,
And blatant speech—a salvage crew,
Not such as in my Oxford youth,
Or manhood’s Peelian prime I knew !
When Church and State—two schemes in one—
Loomed on my brain through morning haze,
And by the old ways I wandered on,
Nor dreamed of treading other ways !
They raise their war-cries’ shrilly screech,
Where our burnt boats bestrew the sand.
Dance round us, hail with rugged speech,
And wave rude Stars, with welcoming hand !
Not such the greetings I foresaw,
When dreaming, studious, in the schools,
Of Commons bowed to Canon’s law,
And Statesmen squared by Churchmen’s rules !
Are these the men with whom my fate
Is linked, since here my boats I burned ?
To this wild shriek of haste and hate,
Must my mellifluous tongue be turned ?
Must my wide vision shrink to theirs.
My vast horizon narrow in,
To this poor round of idol prayers,
And mob-led, or mob-leading, din ?
Bethink thee,—“ they are flesh and blood,”
Are brothers—asses though they be :
That progress points, where o’er the flood
Is shaped, I Rope, the great “to be.”
My boats are charred, the road is barred,
That backward leads across the stream—
Onward ! although the road seem hard,
Eor lights on the horizon beam!
the other. If the coal ever runs out, something equivalent to it will
doubtless turn up, or else turn down. Somebody will discover a cheap
way to set the Thames on fire, or to draw below, and store, atmospheric
electricity. By a system of vertical elevation instead of lateral exten-
sion, our architecture will be adapted to our area, and our cities, no
longer expanding, will continue to ascend. The higher they rise, the
less will Posterity be troubled with any amount of smoke which it may
be unable to consume. The future of England will then be as fresh as
a daisy, still as familiar a flower as ever, and will wear the same roseate
aspect as that under which it now7 presents itself to the exstatic vision
of an ever hopeful Optimist.
Hinnom Flace, Bethnal Green.
A Very Sly Sarcasm.
French satire is subtle. A contemporary states that:—
“ A ‘ communicated ’ note in the Evenement denies in somewhat indignant terms
that the Prince Imperial is about to study the art and mystery of typography.”
At first sight what there could have been, in an announcement that
the Prince Imperial was about to learn printing, to excite indignation,
may not be manifest. Perhaps it was the understood intimation, in an
ironical sense, that the Emperor was believed to intend making a
demonstration of respect for the Press.
Ernest Hart and the Sick Paupers.
Who says there’s nothing in a name
To mark the bearer’s part ?
Our bloated Bumbledom to tame
Demands an Brnest Hart.
The Fenian Movement in Canada.—To the Bight About.