NOTES OF THE MONTH. 103 



lords will not erect walls to knock their heads against? This is legis- 

 lating after a fashion certainly ! To hear beardless Solons and 

 whiskered Dracos, night after night, descanting on the manifold evils 

 of allowing the poor to drink beer, and moralizing with all the 

 fervour of after-dinner devotion upon the unrighteousness of not 

 driving our agricultural population headlong to heaven " nilly-willy," 

 as the sapient squirearchy have it, one would imagine that, previous 

 to the anti-monopoly act of the last administration,, such a thing as 

 crime in England was as rare as unicorns or sea-serpents. We never 

 hear of such a thing as Game Laws having a demoralizing tendency ; 

 the rural magistracy are one and all enlightened, upright, disin- 

 terested, and humane, albeit they occasionally imprison children of 

 eight years for crossing a hedge to pick up an errant straw-hat, or 

 the like; and as for the policy of first denying people a market for 

 their labour, and then forcing them to buy at the highest price the 

 means of subsisting why, it would be absurd to contend that such a 

 measure is not pre-eminently sagacious. It would become Lord 

 Althorp better, if he restricted his " gallant friends," the fribbles of 

 the club-rooms, to such topics as billiards and kid gloves ; for we can 

 assure those chivalrous explorers of the Virginia waters, that an 

 intimacy with Pall Mall and the Horse Guards is not the only 

 requisite for the formation of statesmen. 



A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT ! Paganini has been again de- 

 lighting us with his unapproachable excellencies, but so easily are we 

 surfeited with wonder that this Orpheus, whom two years ago all 

 England was in a ferment to hear, played on this occasion, both in 

 London and in the provinces, to almost empty benches. We heartily 

 deplore this egregious revulsion in the public taste, and have puzzled 

 ourselves to account for it in vain ; sometimes we surmised that his 

 bills of fare, being unrelieved by the presentation of novelty, might 

 operate to his disadvantage, as few are musical enough to sit for hours 

 in a theatre without being weary of fiddling, even though it were 

 Paganini's. Again we thought that certain reminiscences of his 

 illiberality in money matters grated somewhat sorely on the minds of 

 our extra-moral loving public ; and, in short, we had divers conflicting 

 cogitations with which we do not purpose to acquaint our readers. 

 Fortunately we stumbled upon a Liverpool journal, which, in the 

 opinion of its worthy editor, supersedes all other publications in cri- 

 tical acumen, variety of information, and innumerable other qualifi- 

 cations, much too tedious to mention ; and there were all our doubts 

 and scepticism put to instantaneous rout, even as the ghost of Creusa 

 vanished into the air. Paganini did not draw not because he had 

 ceased to be a novelty not because he was less charitable than John 

 Bull could wish him not because he did not diversify his entertain- 

 ments not for any of these reasons, but because (hear it, ye angels, 

 and weep) because " he played occasionally out of tune! !" Conceive 

 this self-sufficient booby, this amphibious Zoilus, pronouncing upon 

 a thing about which he evidently knows as much as he does of the 

 topography of the dog-star. Paganini playing out of tune ! " To 

 what base uses have we come at last, Horatio !" 



