NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



anti-theatrical fulminations of the Bishop of London, to the white 

 mice and monkey crusades of the new police. The latter species of 

 persecution has lately been carried to an amazing extent, and in this 

 respect the appetite would seem to grow upon what it feeds. Not 

 an organ or a hurdy-gurdy squeaks an inharmonious note, from 

 Rotherhithe to Kew, but the blue-coated critics of Bow Street pounce 

 upon the unhappy malefactors. The poor artisans of the metropolis 

 laugh at the antics of the tawny children of the sunny south, the 

 unwieldy gambols of their bears, and the drolleries of ancient 

 monkeys clad in spangles and tattered tinsel ; this is a crime 

 heinous in the eyes of the executive, and the police reports shew 

 how magistrates deal with the perpetrators of such enormities. In 

 England humanity is the main spring of every act. Humanity 

 prompts the bigot to consign the disbelievers of his doctrine to the 

 potentate of darkness ; humanity prompts the landed gentry to tax 

 the food of a whole population ; and humanity prompts the magis- 

 trates to incarcerate Italian melody-grinders and French dancing-dog 

 proprietors lest they should become a prey to the rapacity <jf their 

 masters. Bargains between individuals of every grade may be very 

 safely left to the management of the parties immediately interested. 

 The interference of self-constituted umpires is seldom attended with 

 good to payers or paid, and is invariably prolific of inconvenience to 

 the public. 



TAKING IT COOL. Accounts from South America, received a few 

 days since in London, detail the particulars of an earthquake, by 

 which an extensive city, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the 

 Andes, but the name of which we are unable to recollect, was de- 

 stroyed. Among the strange circumstances to which such occur- 

 rences naturally give rise, there is one related, which, though we 

 have a pretty considerable capacity for the marvellous, rather impairs 

 the equilibrium of our credulity. It appears that the first shock, in 

 this case the most violent, is reported to have continued nearly three 

 quarters of a minute ! Fancy a gentleman with a stop-watch in his 

 hand, his optics on the dial-plate of his duplex chronometer, his ears 

 distended to catch the minutest reverberation of the subterranean 

 rumblings, his body bent forwards towards the earth, and the whole 

 machinery of his nerves, muscles, and tendons wound up to the 

 highest pitch; fancy, we repeat, a gentleman in this position while 

 walls, and battlements, and chimney-tops, brickbats, church- steeples, 

 and stucco-work unpronouncable were tumbling around with mad- 

 dening fury, and braying horrible discord, as if the last trumpet had 

 announced the crack of doom; and say, can we sufficiently admire 

 the coolness which enabled him to note with algebraical minuteness 

 that the refreshing shower bath of masonry and mortar lasted thirty- 

 nine seconds, minus some thirds ! We know of but one instance of 

 self-possession at all comparable to this. A man was employed in 

 the New Town of Edinburgh in repairing the top of one of the 

 houses, which, as all the world knows, are an incalculable number of 

 stories high, in the modern Athens. From some casualty or other he 

 lost his balance, and, of course, sped downwards from the giddy 



M. M. No. 104. 2 F 



