514 The Two Professors. [MAY, 



the debts j but as Mr. Jones wears a highly respectable wig, and is too 

 sedate and prudent to be in any one's books but his own, this will be 

 but a sorry consolation. 



Mary Colling will, for her part, we are equally sure, be in due time 

 made conscious that it is far more pleasant to be employed in the hem- 

 stitch than to be boggling at a hemistic ; and as she fancies that " the 

 flowers talk to her," we should not be at all surprised if some plain peony, 

 with its leaves a-kimbo, should embrace an opportunity of telling her its 

 mind, to the effect that she had for better give the Muses warning j and 

 that if she will needs cultivate poetry, the odds are just nine to one that 

 she makes nothing of it. 



We have thought all along, that is, for many years past, that Black- 

 wood's Magazine has taken credit to itself for quite as much talent, and, 

 to speak fairly, has been allowed by a great many to maintain at 

 least as much influence as it deserves aud possesses. In our opinion, 

 indeed, the talent displayed in that publication has been somewhat over- 

 rated, and its influence exaggerated prodigiously. But whatever they 

 may have been, we rather imagine that both are on the decline now, and 

 we rejoice at it. We cannot agree in the view it pleases to take of liter- 

 ary and philosophical matters; we do not like the spirit in which a great 

 portion of it is written, and we detest most cordially its politics. We 

 suspect that the novelty of its mode of handling its adversaries was ori- 

 ginally its chief recommendation. We all know the appetite displayed 

 by a certain portion of " the reading public/' for every thing that is bad 

 in taste, villanous in spirit, and detestable in intention. It was inferred, 

 rather hastily, that the entire absence of the same kind of wit and 

 humour on the part of those opposed to it, was at once an evidence of 

 their want of capacity to repel and resist, its attacks; and its admirers 

 were fain to believe that their silence was the effect of confusion, and not 

 the result of contempt. But this sort of thing has been of late years a 

 little better understood. It has been discovered long ago, that (although 

 Blackwood was by no means a bad hand at it) the peculiar wit which 

 consists in making mouths, the withering sarcasm of personal allusion, 

 and the bestowal of nick-names, can be infinitely better done on this side 

 of the Tweed. If a gentle knight, disdaining the tournament and the fa- 

 vour of his lady-love, will perversely descend from his steed and enter the 

 lists, by way of amateur, to play upon the salt-box, or to grin through a 

 horse-collar, he must not be surprised or offended if some knavish merry- 

 andrew or inspired clodpoie bear away the prize triumphantly. And 

 thus it has been with Blackwood's Magazine; to that work alone, such 

 influence it assuredly has obtained, is to be ascribed the existence of the 

 filthy and abominable trash circulated weekly in some of the Sunday 

 newspapers. There is its legitimate triumph ; there you shall see, carried 

 out, we admit, to its fullest extent, the delightful humour, the graceful 

 wit that sticks at nothing, certainly not at truth, in the consummation of 

 its fabulous realities. There you shall behold the weekly result of labour 

 undergone by the toiling slaves, 



"Who fetch and carry nonsense up and down." 



There you may mark the gleanings of the ear-primer, or frequenter of key- 

 holes ; and anon admire the mangled remains of a reputation, or the 

 exhumed imperfections of the dead. 



