Punch (60.1871)

198

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[May 13, 1871.

YOU'LL MAKE ME VERY ANGRY."

f —. , ) f^r\\ F course Mr. Punch is familiar,

j \ uj . ) $ / jff \\ but he means by no means to be
\ ivM^t^O A vf I) vul8'ar' wnen he shouts out to
V ^mra^^' / vl //' eTeiT -Bishop, in something like
\ P ^W^TN N 1/ t'16 W0T(^S °£ a orLCe famous

\ V \ \^^^TT^:::::y^/^9 " °' stic!i;yoi;lr mitre tighter, androll

//// up your lawn sleeve.

I i /// 5'1-IALL Old Mono are

V\M»\l / II / coming, I believe."

\\\vi ' n // ^ *s no J°^n? matter. The

I II/// Honourable and Dissenting Mem-

vw J '/ ^er ^or Bradford is about to

jSjfjjbj/' make an onslaught upon the

•||P Church of England. He is stated

!to suppose that he shall have
| eighty-five votes. That is not

\ much. But if he pours on the

ffliffev Church half the fury with which

he assails the Press, there will
^i^s soon be "mitres on the green."

jP&ggk, The newspapers do not report
^^^F him and the other orators of the
Liberation Society fully. Edi-
jj>>, tors are stupid enough to think

that it will be time enough to
j& ^ give importance to agitators
JMSS,^/' n ^pp' s li^JI when they shall have achieved
ff-lm'^^iSr7^ Htf aething, however little. Mean-

*^' WXJSsy= —a,^ „ t£7 while it is believed that the
j IJ I f 1 \ Public is base enough to take

^"^-^ more interest in the siege of

Paris, Low-Lowe's Leap, the
International Show, and even Chester Paces. Mr. Miall thus
thunders at the newspapers:—

•' Whenever we say we will bear it no longer, they will do something for
us. Commercial interest is with them the main interest. Half-a-dozen
columns are given on what is going on in France, a column and a half is given
for sporting intelligence, and then they have not room to report the proceed-
ings of a movement upon which they will have to live for the next six or ten
years. We, Protestant Dissenters of England, are engaged in a mighty cause,
and we will not stand it—we won't endure it at all. We, who sustain
them, and who sustain through them partly the Liberal party—I say, we
won't stand this thing much longer !"

" Away to Heaven, respective lenity,
And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct Now ! "

But, once more, it is no joking matter, either for the Hierarchy or
the Journalists. This is the terrible enemy who is in arms against
both, and " ready to smite twice, and smite no more." The Bishops
may take care of themselves—'tis work at which some of them are
not unapt—but we scarcely know what the Press is to do, because we
do not know what Mr. Miall is going to do to the Press. Only, it is
something very dreadful indeed. Could not a Deputation of Editors
wait upon him, each clad in a penance-sheet made of his own
journal, and humbly beg for mercy ? Punch is at present unequal
to saying more, except that—

There was a schismatic called Miall,
Whose wrath spirted out of its vial,

Says he to the Press,

"You'll report me, I guess,
Or I '11 hang you all up without trial."

"MORE GLADIATORS!"

(Roman Cry.)

Mr. Punch reads (with qualified satisfaction) this, among the
" literary items," of the week :—

" A new Review is in contemplation. It is believed that there is room for
such a periodical, if conducted upon the old principle of giving Slashing
Articles, instead of mere essays, or puffs. We believe the name has not yet
been fixed upon."

We have the greatest pleasure in presenting the intending Slasher
with a name. The Givenoquarterly Review. But it will come a
Crasher. " The world is weary of the past," as Shellet says. The
cry of the Arena bores us.

The Fair Unrepresented.

War ought not Women to have the Suffrage ? Because we are
afraid of their votes, and not of their violence.

" IN THE MEREY MONTH OE MAY.'

Mat-Month, when the mind runs on flowers, till even the omnibus-
cads stick a bud in their button-holes, and a spray of lilac under their
horses' head-stalls ! How it disgusts Punch to hear conceited idiots
members of the Horticultural Society, crowing over the conserva-
tories and sub-tropical gardens, the flower-shows, and acclimatisa-
tion feats of the present day !

I say, our ancestors were wiser than we are in horticulture, as in
most things.

Had not their old-fashioned, fragrant, perennial-planted lush
and luxuriant gardens a braver show, a better smell, than these
pretentious, purse-proud, mushroom-lived, pot-plant gardens of the
present day, when we change our flowers with our fashions, and
bring our "bedding-out" bravery ready made from the forcing-
house, as the ladies do their spring-bonnets from the milliner's show-
room ?

Gardens, indeed! I say, gardening has gone to pot altogether.
Scotch gardeners ! Pooh ! Pedants, with a half-educated itch for
Latin names, and the experiences of an Arctic climate : all for botany
and hot water: with more belief in glass than in celestial sun-
shine. Give Punch an old open-air English garden, with its masses
of cabbage-roses ; its beds of fragrant herbs, marjoram and mignon-
ette, musk and lavender, southern-wood and sweet basil; its wall-
flowers and stocks; its clove-pinks and carnations.

Think of an old English hostelry, with clean sheets, smelling of
lavender, and sweet herbs stuck in the windows, and then of a new
English railway hotel, with its faint odour of ready-made soup, and
its general suggestion of gas-leakage.

Think of old Izaak Walton, on a May morning, by the side of
Lea River, where now stand gas-works and patent manure manu-
factories, looking down the meadows, and seeing here a boy gather-
ing lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping culver-keys
and cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this present month of
May ; and these and many other field-flowers so perfuming the air
that he thought "that very meadow like that field in Sicily of
which Diodortjs speaks, where the perfumes arising from the place
make all dogs that hunt on it to fall off, and to lose their hottest
scent." Think of the smells of Lea river-side now !

Think of walking arm-in-arm with his Piscator and Venator
in the cool shade of a honeysuckle hedge within a mile of Totten-
ham High-cross !

Think of an old English farm-house parlour, low-roofed and oaken
raftered, with old English beau-pots in the broad window-seats !

Think of . . . anything but what Punch is forced to think of
here in London now-a-days.

Think of every sight and smell that seems most akin to May, and
it will be old English all over.

Old England revelled in flowers, loved them, fresh and dry, sat
among them, strewed them ondts floors, slept in sheets that smelt of
them, distilled them for drinks, ate them in salads ! For proof,
here is an Old English spring salad of 1682. You will find it in the
Food Journal's domestic recipes for May :—

" There is a sort of sallet commonly gathered in the spring, consisting of
divers young buds and sprouts both of trees and shrubs, the which, being
gathered discreetly, with nothing but what is very young and tender, and so
that no one thing exceed the other, but there may be a fine'agreenient in
their relish, if so, it will be very acceptable to many. Violets, small sprouts
of burnet, young leaves of primroses and flowers, mints, sorrel, buds of goose-
berries, roses, barberries, flowers of burrage, bugloss, cowpangles, and arch-
angel."

There is flowery food with a vengeance ! Think of New England's
lambs cropping it, as Old England's hard-a-weathers did, to the
sweetening of their breaths, the purification of their bloods, and the
general encouragement of a sweet, green spring-time turn of mind.

Black Mail and Red.

How much happier we are than the French ! We have no Com-
mune : we have no Civil War. Our Ministers gratify our populace
first by allowing them to dictate the national expenditure, and
secondly by imposing the whole weight of it on the upper and
middle classes in the Income-tax. Perhaps the French would be as
much at peace as ourselves, if the respectable part of them would
only submit to be plundered.

Ministerial Irish Melody.

Guarded by surrounding Ocean,

Britons never will be slaves,
For it is the Land of Goschen ;

Where Britannia rules the waves.

Reviews to be Written.—Development theory. Mr. Darwin
and Dr. Newman on each other's books.