Punch (72.1877)

274

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON

CHARIVARI.

[June 16, 1877.

ARBITER E LEG AN Tl ARUM.

Housemaid. " Oh, please, 'M, could I go out this Evening? 'cause Cook
nex' Door's got a 'Lang'age o' Flowers Bee,' and she's requested me to
be one o' the Judges !"

WISDOM IN WIGS.

Oh, Mr. Pepys ! If, Sir, you citizens of the invisible world take in and
read our newspapers, how immensely you must have been delighted with a
passage in a recent law report of sittings in the Queen's Bench Division at
Nisi Prius before Mr. Justice Field ! In case you may have missed it, Sir,
here it is ; something quite after your own heart;—

"That prevailing uncertainty -which characterises the practice and procedure of the
Supreme Court of Judicature has now extended to the question as to -what clothes should
he worn on red-letter days. His Lordship appeared this morning in those brilliant robes
•which learned judges wear on days which commemorate the birth of Her Majesty or
the death of the Saints. On taking his seat, one of Her Majesty's Counsel proceeded to
address him. But his Lordship drew attention to the fact that his wig was not of these
dimensions which the solemnity of the day required."

Perhaps, Sir, you were almost as much gratified by this judicial animadver-
sion on a Counsel's wig as you were vexed by a great man's culpable inattention
to your own, in an interview at which you appeared in a new peruke—a piece
of ill-breeding which naturally disgusted you.

As mightily, no doubt, were you edified by the Queen's Counsel's alacrity to
apologise for the undesigned shortcoming of his wig, and his promptitude to
repair that grave deficiency forthwith :—

"The learned Counsel in question stated that he had hoped it would not be supposed
that he was capable of any want of respect either to Her Majesty or to the Court, and
that he would without delay attire himself in the full-bottomed wig; he had, however,
understood that the full-bottomed wig should not be worn at Nisi Prius."

Pretty, as you, Mr. Pepys, might have noted, to see the importance of a
wig so solemnly asserted and acknowledged, and the "wisdom in the wig" a
mighty true saying. And, Lord, to think how wigs and robes do help on business,
and to observe so great consequence attributed to vestments, not only in the
Church, but in the Law as well.

Gesler Over Again.—-How Marshal MacMahon and his new Ministers make
the Corporation of Paris do homage. By standing before them unbonnetted.

THE SPHINX AND THE STATUES.

" It is much easier to keep a Conservative majority together
in the House of Commons than a Liberal majority, and that for

reasons which lie at the very root of the case.....If you

examine the remains of Egyptian antiquity, you will find that
the great principle which the Egyptian artist had in his mind
was the representation of Kepose. But if you examine the Greek
school of Art, which is admitted on all hands to be the head of all
schools, you will find that the predominating principle of the

Greek representations is life and motion.....You will find,

I think, that the predominating idea of Conservatism is the
Egyptian principle of repose ; but in our Liberal party we have
got the Greek idea of life and motion. I need not tell you that
when you have got a lot of statues arranged, it is not very diffi-
cult to keep them in order; but if all those Conservative statues
were to become suddenly animated with the power and the wish
to walk about the halls in which they were placed, no doubt the
question of drill would become much more serious and more
difficult."—Mr. Gladstone at Birmingham.

The Sphinx soliloquiseth—
Egyptian- versus Greek! Sublime Repose,
Cold Silence puzzling friends and baffling foes, .
Against unresting stir and hot pugnacity,
Backed by a more than feminine loquacity :
Agreed, my Gladstone ! Gladly I accept
The apt comparison. You 're an adept
In lore Hellenic : for myself, men say
Semitic nous is more in my calm way.
They say ! What say they not ? The mob must have
Its Mephistopheles. Once Louis gave
The quidnuncs quarry ; Bismarck now, and I—
Arcades ambo—lead them in full cry,
Though mostly on false scents. All fools believe
The man whose heart is not upon his sleeve,
A mine of mystery sinister and dark,
Whose secrets they, and they alone, may mark.
My craft is Asiatic ? Be it so !
The East's our crux, and Eastern guile may go
Some way to solving it, when Western wit
As blatant as Boeotian, fails to hit.
Greek statues, Gladstone ? Then some frolic elf,
Some mad Pygmalion—shall we say yourself ?—
Has quickened them to wild spasmodic life,
And set them all at hot and aimless strife.
Ajax defies Achilles ; Nestor snubs
Astute Ulysses, who severely drubs
Fast-tongued Thersites. No, 'tis not " Repose."
When Greek meets Greek, black eyes and broken nose
Afford a sight that fills with boundless joy
The calm spectators in the Tory Troy,
Who have but little cause to dread a blow
From statues who can't keep in statu quo.
The placid Sphinx looks on, and blandly smiles,
His stone-still squadrons proof against the wiles
Of tempters who would break their serried ranks,
And set them, like your own, at crack-brained pranks,
Till, as with smashed antiques in learned shows,
Nor arm mates leg, nor mouth will pair with nose.
Hot friend, so prompt to pose for every part
From Nestor to Achilles, all true Art
Aims at Repose. Ask Ruskxn. There's your lack;
When you are up with harness on your back,
And blade in fist, against whatever odds,
Your swashing blow's a spectacle for gods.
I've felt it, and speak feelingly. But rest
Is a soft blessing stranger to your breast,
Nor can you shape its semblance, or display
The surface-calm which covers inward fray,
Like—well, like any Artist. Foes may tremble
At your hot wrath, yet he who can't dissemble
Is but half armed against the shocks of fate,
Nor can he rightly war who cannot wait.
My statues may seem stolid, but they stand;
While yours at every stir but stumble. Grand
Is Greek mobility, no doubt, but still
Would you not like a slightly sterner drill,
A little steadier discipline ? You flush!
For shrewd finesse you do not care a rush—
No Greek in that, you trust to " life and motion,"
Untiring zeal and patriot devotion.
Extremely fine ! But then your Statues stray.
Good Sir, you cannot guide your Greeks that way,
Save with short Rupert-rush to conquest brief,
Whose end is broken host and banished chief.
Stoop, stern-browed Mentor, to a pupil's part,
And learn a little from Egyptian Art.