NOTES OF THE MONTH. 571 



would do honour to a Johnson. " Timid and retiring, but grave 

 without severity, and kind without pretension !" that is to say, 

 alarmed but harmless, cordial but not conceited, serious but not 

 savage. 



Well, we do wonder how all these fine things are written ; but it is 

 marvellous how a penny a line, and all expenses paid, will brighten 

 the faculties of correspondents ! 



ACUTE DISTINCTION Among the marvellous discoveries made 

 by the drunken committee in their late investigations, that touch- 

 ing the heinousness of the gin-palaces was the most momentous in 

 the estimation of the 'inquisitors. Gin consumed by the blaze of 

 a couple of gas lights was found to be of twofold the malignity 

 of that swallowed by the light of a single burner ; and stout vended 

 from mahogany counters infinitely more pernicious than the same 

 commodity drank from deal or oaken shopboards. A pretty bar- 

 maid tendering a coalheaver his tipple, brought more evil on the 

 swarthy one than if she were fourteen stone, and didn't curl her hair ; 

 and doors swinging on patent hinges admitted vice with twice the 

 facility it could enter through portals grating on rusty iron. A liquid 

 found to be a genial stimulant when imbibed from dusky pewter 

 proved hemlock juice if quaffed from chequered glasses ; and every 

 thing connected with the larger juniper temples partook of iniquity 

 in the same ratio. This philosophic medium of magnifying vice by 

 the colour of its garment 'is sufficiently indicative of the wisdom of 

 the sages who undertake to think for the rest of mankind. Ordinary 

 individuals deduce arguments from facts ; but our wise ones discard 

 this plebeian process. We should be glad to be told by what means 

 a puncheon of gin drank at one house is a whit more noxious than if 

 it were drank at ten in the same space of time. Gulliver was as 

 effectually secured by the threads of the Lilliputians as if he were 

 bound with a cable. One gin palace uproots half a dozen minor 

 shrines of the fiery deity, and it says much for the taste of his votaries 

 that they wish him worshipped '' as befits a god," though the sum 

 total of their offerings be not increased. Drunkenness is a great evil ; 

 but if a man is a gin-drinker, tying his arms will not cure him of it. 



HISTORIC MORCEAU. Among the deaths of the month we find 

 the following : 



" Lately at Amsterdam, at the age of nearly seventy, the celebrated poet 

 Grinheus Von Loots, knight of the order of the Dutch Lion." 



What would the bearded compatriots of the illustrious dead think 

 of us if they heard us avow our utter ignorance of the existence of 

 the celebrated Von Loots? It is certainly no laughing matter for 

 Grinheus' admirers that his immortality should be confined to 

 Amsterdam ; we were not aware that the portly burgomasters have 

 lately taken to practical jokes, but assuredly this looks amazingly 

 like an attempt to smoke us. A celebrated Dutch poet ! we should 

 as soon think of extracting harmony from a galvanized donkey as of 



