1827.] 



[ 315 ] 

 MONTHLY THEATRICAL REPORT. 



THE polite world are now on the wing-. 

 The nobility of Whitechapel and the opu- 

 lent of Moorfields, find London insupport- 

 able, and are roving like butterflies through 

 the meadows of Margate. Steamers fly 

 down the Thames at the rate of three 

 hundred miles a day, and discharge a fair, 

 gallant, and amatory cargo at the rate of 

 five hundred tons of humanity a voyage. 

 Stage coaches race with double velocity, 

 new establishments of reception houses 

 for the fractured are propogating along 

 the favourite roads, and the five hundred 

 operatives on man, who have not a month 

 ago taken their degrees in Edinburgh, in 

 direct defiance of Lord Elleuborough's 

 famous Act, are already absorbed into the 

 London surgical circulation, and giving 

 encouragement for a fresh relay of men 

 of the tourniquet. 



For all this there is a reason, for our 

 countrymen are nothing without one. The 

 bee and the ant are honoured by philo- 

 sophy for making provision in summer for 

 the wants of the times of frost and snow, 

 when they can seek and steal no more. 

 Margate, Brighton, Hastings, the Strand 

 at Dover, the huts at Sandgate, the three 

 houses and a half at Eastbourne, the lit- 

 tle white- washed crescent at Weymouth, 

 which, from the first south-wester, and 

 first angry spring-tide may heaven long 

 preserve, for nothing else can do it ; the 

 whole circuit of our sweet island, on which 

 the whole water-loving population are at 

 this hour performing their ablutions, some 

 in machines, some in green serge, some in 

 propatulo, as the doctors of the London 

 University will have it, clothed only in 

 the sinless covering of Eve ; some, as at 

 Brighton, washed by woman, unlike Mac- 

 beth's witches only in one point, that 

 their want of beards distinguishes them 

 from men ; and some, as at Yarmouth, and 

 through the delicate realm of Norfolk, 

 washed by men a fortunate contrivance, 

 which makes bathing the most popular 

 amusement possible in that province of 

 patriots, smugglers, and turkies. But in 

 all, the grand stimulant is matrimony. 

 The toil of glory and gain in London is, 

 unhappily, too headstrong for the tender 

 passion. The Lord Mayor's coach pass- 

 ing once a week down Cheapside, the glit- 

 tering supremacy which even the sheriffs 

 hold, as surrounded by laced liveries and 

 bowing constables, they move through the 

 adoring rabble, and in the sublime sensa- 

 tion of the moment scarcely deign to re- 

 cognize their own shops, much less honour 

 with a glance the genuflexions of their 

 own shopmen, performing their civic 

 homage at the door j even the more sober, 

 grcen-tea-coloured, snuff-coloured, drab- 



coloured, trade-complexioned coaches of 

 the aldermen and common-council, make 

 an impression on the apprentice senso- 

 rium that puts to flight all sentiment. The 

 brightest belles look fatal in rain j the 

 curls of the most glossy wig of the Ross 

 dynasty are absolutely thrown away, and 

 the whole art de faire sauffrir, the last 

 perfection communicated by the last Pa- 

 risian femme de chambre of the last Pari- 

 sian academy, just imported into the ro- 

 mantic vicinage of Camberwett, Hoxton, 

 or Lambeth Marsh, might as well be ex- 

 pended on the fish at Billingsgate. To 

 be Lord Mayor one day or other, is, as 

 Alderman Waithman says, an object of 

 glorious ambition, " worth dying for with- 

 in an hour after one was born." But once 

 set the parties on the shore (any shore 

 will do, from the Isle of Dogs inclusive), 

 and they feel at once that Venus was born 

 of the sea, and was in fact nothing but a 

 handsome kind of Greek oyster. Come 

 unto these yellow sands, and then take 

 hands, in the language of nature, by its 

 natural organ, the lips of Shakspeare. 

 There the most remote approximate, the 

 most tardy accelerate, the most feeble in- 

 vigorate ; the odours of the great, both 

 from which the goddess of beauty rose 

 fuming, penetrate the brain ; they smell 

 the vegetative mud ; saunter along the 

 shingle to the breathing of the low water 

 breeze; exchange their mutual morning 

 gatherings of shells and sea-weed, and 

 sigh that confession, soft, sweet, and irre- 

 vocable, for which Moorfields shall yet 

 rejoice through all her stalls, and the 

 Minories shall exult in new shops, hops, 

 and sweet singers of Israel. But London 

 still retains some few, either whose days 

 of being smitten have not come, or have 

 past, or who have lingered to hear Parson 

 Irving's hot weather cuttings up of the 

 carnality of the Kirk, or who take an in- 

 terest in the election of some doctor to 

 some new college, bringing from the land 

 of poleetikal ekoonomy, satisfactory cre- 

 dentials that he involuntarily wears 

 breeches, and that he does not believe in 

 God ; or waiting to see what new mi- 

 nistry we are to have in the next twenty- 

 four hours ; and how Lord Goderich will 

 pacify Mr. B. for not being turnspit in. 

 the king's kitchen^ malgre his being 

 unrivalled in his qualifications for the 

 office ; or console the Marquis of L. for not 

 having the exclusive appointment of those 

 noble whigs who are ambitious of being 

 made gentlemen and women of the bed- 

 chamber, and airing the shirt and slippers 

 of His Majesty, whom heaven long pre- 

 serve, in the possession of his own health 

 and his own kitchen. 

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