Punch (72.1877)

April 21, 1877.] PUNCH, OK, THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

169

ICTORY OVER VANDALS.

erily, Mr. Punch, for a long
time past, in daily perusing
your contemporaries, your ex-
clamation must have been
"Out on ye, owls! Nothing
but songs of dulness! No
news, ye newspapers, but the
most dreary, disheartening,
and dry P No relief to Parlia-
mentary prose and the pestilent
Eastern Question?" "Well,
Sir, here is some set-off to dis-
comfort, to common-place and
twaddle ; to tales of atrocities,
outrages, and Vandalisms.
Here is exhilarating intelli-
gence. I quote the Times :—

" Hampstead and Highgate
Kailway.—Mk. H. R. Williams
writes to us from Oak Lodge, High-
gate, N.:—' The Bill of the North
Metropolitan High Level Railway
Company has just been withdrawn
by its promoters. Thus ends, after
more than one fruitless attempt to
launch it, a scheme which would
have benefited no one (except its
promoters), having no single
feature of public utility to recom-
mend it, and with the absolute certainty of spoilin g two of the finest suburbs
of London.'"

Hooray! These are glad tidings, Sir, to myself at least, as one
who has the heart that can feel for another. The defacement at the
hands of the North Metropolitan High Level Railway Company,
happily averted from Hampstead and Highgate, is the like of that
which my Common has been threatened with by the London and
South-Western. I hope their project of encroachment will be de-
feated also by the effectual opposition of the Open Space Defenders
in Parliament to the Railway interest with their policy of steam
and iron. But to insure my delivery from the hands of those Philis-
tines who are doing their utmost to despoil me by adding inroad to
Railroad, pray, Sir, exhort my Parliamentary friends and well-
wishers to use careful watch for the preservation of the pleasant
vicinage of your suburban Barnes.

P.S.—It is all very well to remove all impediments to progress,
but I dread the abolition of the toll on Hammersmith Bridge. One
consequence will be that my little quiet promontory, or peninsula,
will very soon be built all over, and I shall be surrounded and
suffocated with slums. Who will not be very much the less happy
for all this, and who any the happier but landlords and builders P

REVOLUTION AVERTED !

Dear Mr. Punch,

My attention has been called to an article by the Right
Hon. Sir Henry Sumner Maine, K.S.I., &c, in the current number
of the Fortnight!?/ Review (a periodical I am free to say I never read
before), in which he compares the feudal land-laws of England and
France, and shows, with convincing clearness, how the main cause
of the French Revolution—that which not only brought it about,
but made it the horrid thing we all shudder at—was the peculiar
hatred of the French peasant to the French seigneur. And yet, as
Sir Henry goes on to show, almost all the incidents of French
tenure existed in England as in France. In fact the French peasant
was but the English copyholder under another name. How then
was it, he pertinently asks, that here in England we, having the
same evils, escaped a like curse ? Do not English hearts burn at
injustice and wrong ? Do not Englishmen nurse grievances, and
thirst for revenge ? Sir Henry is not the man to ask questions
and then run away from the answers. He tells us why it was.

No one of the incidents of feudal tenure was more oppressive and
galling than the liability of the tenant to do taskwork for his lord.
In seed-time and at harvest he had to give a day's work for nothing.
He was driven reluctantly to the field, whither he went with a sore
heart, and which he left at eventide with muttered curses and half-
formed resolves. So grew the "rooted wrong," which it required
a Revolution to remove.

In this England of ours the same liability existed, but instead of
tears we had laughter—instead of curses, songs.' How is this ? There
was, so Sir Henry tells us, a custom in England that though the
tenant was hound at certain seasons to give his lord a day's icork, the

lord was bound to give the tenant, at the close of every day so spent,
a Dinner!

There ! How clear it all seems now! The mystery is solved. The
true way of averting revolution is henceforth made plain to the
meanest understanding. It lies round the dinner-table.

In course of time, when the lords grew economical, they found
that Hodge ate a great many more potatoes than he hoed, and they
therefore ceased to exact the labour and to give the dinner.

But the effect of the custom survived in the admirable propensity
of our race to dine together on every possible occasion. It is the
Dinner, which has saved us, as Sir Henry shows, from horrors
unspeakable in the past. That it may long continue so to do in the
future, is the earnest prayer of Yours truly,

Benjamin Boomersound,
{Ex Toast-Master, with the sentiment, " May
our Public Dinners never grow less ! ")

NEAR MENTONE.
experience of an eye and nose.
By an Englishman in Italy,

The sheen of olive-leafage flickers o'er
The shaded valley depths, like guardian steel

To keep from sunshine's ravage the rich store
Of flowers that those cool treasuries conceal.

In restful masses stand the pines on high,

In the deep hush of the unclouded sky.

The wind from seaward blows : no fitful gust,
But one harmonious march of fragrant air,

Brisk with the sharpness of the salt sea-dust,
Sweet with spring flowers and piny odours rare :

That breathes, as with a loving hush, to still

The voice of maidens coming down the hill.

"With laughing eyes beneath the kerchief's fold,
And smiling lips and queenly pose and gait,

They bear their lemon-baskets, tilled with gold,
Like Grecian nymphs who on some goddess wait;

A living picture in each vivid face,

And balanced form of free and simple grace.

A hush of converse as they draw anigh,

A coyness in the lift of nimble feet,
A consciousness of my regard, a shy

Half smile of welcome as our glances meet,
Like wind-swept sunshine over April grass,—
And, Heavens ! the whiff of Garlic as they pass !

Opinions Differ.

"I think it is a matter for congratulation and rejoicing, in the circum-
stances, that I should have to state that there is a small surplus, no remission
of taxation, and no intention on the part of the Government of imposing any
new tax."—Chancellor of the Exchequer, Budget Speech.

Perhaps the tax-payer may think otherwise. Perhaps he may
consider that it is hardly "a matter for congratulation and re-
joicing "that there is " no remission of taxation." Or are we all
(the Chancellor of the Exchequer excepted) wrong? Is taxa-
tion a blessing in disguise, one which ought to make us grateful for
its imposition, thankful for its continuance, and discontented and
murmuring when it is remitted ?

No Smoke without (Poetic) Fire.

Here is one of the neatest things in poetical advertisement Punch
has come across for some time. It is from the Burnley Advertiser :

" Gaily Young Ferguson
Purchases his Cigars
At Blazer's shop,
"Where the best are.

" When he wants good Smoking Mix-
And Snuff for his nose; [ture,
Gaily Young Ferguson
Purchases those."

The air aimed at seems to be the once fashionable "Gaily the
Troubadour ; " but the advertiser may say of his metre, as Fusbos
says of his tobacco, " Short cut or long to me are all the same."

a speaker to some purpose.

The favourite interlocutory ejaculation of Ahmed Vefik Pasha,
Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, it seems, is " Siiss." Now
" Suss " in German means " sweet." In Turkish it means " Shut
up ! "—which is short and not sweet.

rrm itvii