[ 209 ] 



NOTES JTOR THE MONTH. 



THERE has been very little beyond " Domestic intelligence" for public- 

 curiosity to lay itself put upon, during the last month ; and even that- 

 information has not been of a very decidedly original or interesting char 

 racter. The lovers of the horrible have had a "' Murder," at Huntingdon ; 

 but the scene lay over-far off; our London sympathy, as to " police'* 

 cases, seldom extends farther than the twelve miles limit of the two-penny 

 post. And the action of Mrs. Scott against the Morning Chronicle 

 newspaper, revived the affair of Mrs. Bligh and Mr. Wellesley; but of 

 that the people believed they knew all i\is facts before, and they never care 

 to be troubled with the argument. Foreign news, and state affairs in 

 general, have been hardly more lively. The letters from Portugal contain 

 nothing but long explanations as to which of the royal asses in that 

 country is entitled to the supreme rule a matter about which the people 

 of this country care entirely nothing. The treaty of the European 

 powers with reference to Greece, has been published ; but the people of 

 Greece like those of Ireland have been so long in the habit of 

 being ill used, that a sort of feeling rather obtains as if it was " all 

 right" that they should be so or at least that thoy must be used to it. 

 Some changes have taken place in our home ad m inistration ; but they are 

 not important, as they constitute no change from the principles of the 

 newly adjusted system. And public questions generally are as completely 

 lost sight of, until the next session of parliament, as if, until that period 

 arrived, the country had no interest in them. 



" Marc/i" of Impertinence. Every soul that ono meets with in so- 

 ciety now-a-days, seems to be only intent upon perpetrating some co-x- 

 combry that has not yet been committed by other people ! There is 

 nothing on earth that Mr. and Mrs. Fig will not do even to the parting 

 with their precious money to get the start in absurdity of Mr. and Mrs. 

 Wick. Thus the last impertinence of making a mystery of " leap frog, 

 and fetching "professors" from Switzerland and Germany to teach it it is 

 not enough to tack this folly, as a "science," to the education of boys, or 

 " hobadehoys" where, nevertheless, one would think it was sufficiently 

 ridiculous ? but the same precious mountebankery is trying to work its way 

 into female schools, under the high sounding denomination of " Female 

 Gymnastics," or "Calisthenics;" and we have an overflowing of at 

 least half a dozen " treatises" in octavo, with torn-boy figures in mad atti- 

 tudes, stuck in pictures in the front, assuring the world ex unodisce omnes 

 we take that before us (the publication of " Signor Voarino") which is 

 perhaps among the least absurd that " nine tenths of the diseases under 

 which females suffer are brought about by want of exercise" 1 ' that " this 

 is proved by the superior health, &c. of females of the labouring classes, 

 to whom illness is comparatively unknown' that nothing is so common 

 as to see. in the same family, " the boys ruddy, healthy, and vigorous, the 

 girls pale, sickly, and languid," &c. &c. together with an endless out- 

 pouring of more of the same sort of Bedlamite trash, extracted piece meal 

 out of medical books, written for the circumstances that existed half a 

 century ago, at a time when some mischief perhaps was done in the 

 bringing up of young girls, by a superfluous demotion to the study of 

 sewing samplers, and embroidering hearth rugs ; but which devotion, with 

 M. M. AW &ri>*. VOL. IV. No. 20. 7 



