568 The Reigning Vice. [MAY, 



put an end to. We know the class of offenders well. They are commonly 

 young people, without shirt collar, and with precocious boldness, which 

 they call high foreheads ; youthful devotees, with a tendency to consump- 

 tion and other sentimental infirmities. But let them beware j for we and 

 others are become frantic, and must no longer be goaded into madness by 

 such torturing devices. And if any young lady resident in the country, 

 or elsewhere, desire hereafter to let loose her album upon us, we implore 

 her, on our knees, to desist from her rash attempt, and, in common mercy, 

 to set her father's bull-dog at us. Quadrupeds may be resisted, but we 

 cannot away with those two-footed pests that come swarming in the pha- 

 lanx of heroic measure. 



We must express our unfeigned regret, that this distressing custom 

 should prevail to so frightful an extent in an assembly from which we 

 would fain have hoped better things. But nothing is more common in the 

 assembly to which we allude, than for an honourable member to get upon 

 his legs, and, after a most miserable perversion of his vernacular tongue, 

 wind up with a mingle-mangle of some Latin or Greek passage, when, for 

 any conceivable application the said quotation possesses, or for any additional 

 information it conveys, the orator might just as wisely have recited 

 " Propria quae maribus," or chaunted " Te Deum," or performed a head- 

 over-heel movement upon the table of the House. 



Again, granting the occasional aptness of his simile or his conceit, what 

 possible augmentation of meaning is derivable from the effort ? Instead 

 of saying in so many words, " Why what a most unconscious and uncon- 

 scionable kettle are you, to be abusing the pot after this fashion," our clas- 

 sical senator must needs have it, 



* duis tulerit Gracchus, dereditione quaerentes?" 



in the place of " It is there that the shoe pinches," we are favoured with 

 " Hinc illae lachryma? j" arid because he cannot say at once, " Who the 

 deuce could have supposed the opposition would have been in such a 

 rage ? " he prefers to close his period with 



" Tantae ne animis celestibus irae?" 



What odds will the reader take a hundred to one ? that in the said 

 discussion upon emigration or the corn laws, we are not tormented with 

 the unbearable and everlasting 



" Princes and kings may flourish or may fade, 

 A breath may make them, as a breath has made ; 

 But a bold peasantry, their country's pride . 

 When once destroy'cl, can never be supplied." 



If we should chance to be in the gallery upon that occasion, we will not 

 swear that we may not be ordered to the bar for a breach of privilege. 



To conclude, as we believe the vice to be incurable, and learn that its 

 professors are not yet amenable to the laws, we propose that they be 

 banished 



" To some far region of acrostic land," 



to indulge their propensity at pleasure 5 and we have not the least objec- 

 tion to an arrangement, whereby Lady Morgan might be constituted pre- 

 siding queen, or perpetual chairwoman of the company. 



