NOTES OF THE MONTH. 347 



with the exact resemblance of two deformed fingers of the hand of 

 the supposed murderer ! If any link were wanting to unite the chain 

 of evidence to fasten the guilt on this unhappy three-fingered Jack, 

 here is the hand that will forge it. If he were brought before an 

 awe-stricken Hereford jury, this piece of vegetable nature would hang 

 him as sure as fate. Not a " bald faced Hereford/' of the whole drove 

 but would believe him guilty to his dying day. And, speaking in a 

 culinary point of view, what a hand is here lost to cookery ! for who 

 could stomach a murderer's paw, with his mutton and capers ? 



Encore unefois. Another paper informs us, that at the shop of 

 Mr. Fraser, in the High Street, Edinburgh, may be seen, in a flint, 

 from Calton Hill, the exact portrait of the Duke of Wellington. The 

 head of his Majesty could never have been hit more accurately by 

 ths stone of Dennis Collins, than is that of his Grace by this Scotch 

 pebble. But these " freaks of nature," are not so apposite as they 

 might have been. Had we the ordering of such things, the murder- 

 ous hand should have been exhibited in flint, while the head of his 

 Grace should have figured in congenial turnip. This might be called 

 illustrative justice. The flinty hand would be highly typical of the 

 remorseless assassin, while the pale turnip would admirably exem- 

 plify the pulpy-headed politician. 



*M ' ULE 3l' t 8 



T v TT Tt/r ifffifrr-rP^PfW. 1 i 



PLAYS AND POCKET-HANDKERCHIEFS. Mr. B. L. Bulwer has 

 given notice of a motion for the 12th inst. for leave to bring in a bill 

 to render the calling of theatrical manager, like that of Peachems 

 tailor-thief, " an honest employment." At present, there is scarcely 

 the conducter of a play house who is not a receiver of stolen goods 

 an Ikey Solomons of the drama. The object of Mr. Bulwer's bill is to 

 force these gentry into comparative respectability, under the penalty 

 of a heavy fine. In other words, to make them henceforth pay the 

 men whose brains they have hitherto sucked, as " weasels suck eggs," 

 gratis. As the no law at present stands, the man who writes a play, 

 labours not for his own especial advantage, but for the benefit of 

 the over-paid and grasping actor, and the shuffling, unprincipled coun- 

 try manager. Poor old O'Keefe died but a week or two since. His 

 dramas continue to be played in every theatre throughout the king- 

 dom : he, however, might have picked hemp in the workhouse, had 

 not a royal pension been miraculously awarded to him. On the other 

 hand, Munden made a fortune out of the characters invented by the 

 destitute dramatist, and died, ' the sleek possessor of thousands/ 

 That most amusing and instructive tome, The Lives of Highwaymen, 

 does not contain incidents more strongly characterized by dishonesty 

 and cool impudence than does the Report of the Dramatic Committee, 

 in its various exhibitions of managerial picking and stealing. The 

 country theatres have their Turpins, their Abershaws, and their Six- 

 teen-string Jacks, as well as in the old picturesque days, had Bagshot, 

 Hounslow, and Finchley. Judging several of those worthies by the 

 evidence in the above-named Report, we would sentence and classify 

 them with the mere cut-purse and foot-pad. And yet it is mar- 

 velous how the unprotected condition of dramatic copyright has con- 



