NOTES OF TI-IK MONTH. 219 



its conductor. A case so flagrantly subversive of all the previously 

 expressed opinions of the members of the Grey cabinet has not yet 

 come to light. Lord Melbourne through his station at the Home 

 Office must, of course, have been at the head of this dignified cru- 

 sade. Doubtless it will be remembered, should he take the opinion 

 of the country in a general election, that not only did he outrage the 

 feelings of the people by the suppression of the publication of 

 opinion, but that he perfected that outrage through the instrumen- 

 tality of the public money. 



IMPORTANT TO COCKNIES. It has been intimated to us from 

 various quarters that the elevation of the statue of his late Royal 

 Highness of York at Carlton Terrace has been unattended by any of 

 those critical effusions with which the metropolitan public were half 

 Grecianized in the time of George the Fourth. We sincerely de- 

 plore this. The consequences of a total obliteration of a just ap- 

 proval of architectural excellencies on the part of nurserymaids and 

 out-of-place footboys cannot be contemplated without apprehension. 

 Let any one contrast the prevalence of knowledge in this respect 

 now with that of half a dozen years ago. Why, one could not proceed 

 from Regent Circus to Charing Cross without being informed of 

 the disposition of every hundred weight of Parian marble in the 

 Temple of Theseus, the Acropolis, and the Parthenon by some 

 erudite pot-boy. On all sides the names of Pericles and George the 

 Fourth, Philo of Athens, and Mr. Nash resounded ; while every 

 parish pensioner that chose to take water from the Cripplegate pumps 

 looked at the cast-iron lions on the spouts, and talked of bassi-relievi 

 and the ancient Persipolis. There was no end to this sort of jargon 

 while antique turrets three months old, ready made moss-grown bat- 

 tlements, and antideluvian fortresses aged six weeks, continued to 

 spring up on every side. However, when the queen's business and 

 that sort of thing, as Mathews says, set the people to think of some- 

 thing else, those gentry who saw nothing but Ionian grace, Spartan 

 simplicity, and Corinthian gorgeousness in the Windsor works, sud- 

 denly looked upon all these with jaundiced eyes. Mr. Moore, with 

 his Fudge Family and Brighton Chinese, and others, calling Neptune 

 and his trident and the dome of Pimlico palace " a French cook and 

 plum pudding/' completed the demolition of the rage for the superb. 

 But the York statue having been mounted without any extraordinary 

 fuss, we may fairly presume that the climax of our Vandalism has 

 arrived, and that taste will again re-assert its genial influence over the 

 kingdom of Cockaigne. Indeed, this may be confidently predicted from 

 the fact of the St. James's Palace being all but finished, and from the 

 journals, hebdomodal and diurnal, giving note of preparation for the 

 hoisting of an equestrian statue of his late majesty on a pedestal in 

 the court-yard of the palace. Let the trumpet of connoisseurship 

 then ring loud and long. Come forth, ye critics of farthest Clapham, 

 and rejoice that the days of entablatures and architraves are again at 

 hand. Approach from Wapping of remotest east, ye to whom the 

 sounds of shafts, capitals and friezes, are dear as the strains of the 

 mermaid at whose song " the rude sea grew civil." What a fund 



