572 NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



finding it in the spluttering of a piece of blubber from the Zuyder 

 Zee. In twenty years hence some lout, on the authority of a news- 

 paper obituary, will assign Loots a station in the fraternity of the in- 

 spired, though a tankard of sour beer, looming through his tobacco 

 fumes, was the brightest vision he ever conjured. 



METROPOLITAN ANOMALIES. We are so rapidly losing our na- 

 tional characteristics of big headedness and absurdity in the growth 

 of improvement, that were it not for some of the public functionaries 

 indulging us with an occasional entertainment in the old vein, we 

 should be almost sceptical of the whereabout of our locality. The 

 London magistracy are, we opine, fast resolving themselves into a 

 class sui generis, whose principal trait is the setting at nought of all 

 rules that apply to the rest of mankind. The past month, it is 

 true, has been plethoric in singularities of all sorts, and the va- 

 garies of our police luminaries were correspondingly erratic. Mr. 

 Shutt of Marylebone recreated in a practical pun on his unique cog- 

 nomen in excluding one of the fourth estates from beyond the sphere 

 of his jurisdiction because he reported the oracle verbatim; the man 

 of brevities was, however, shortly permitted to deposit his foolscap 

 in his old post through the medium of Mr. Secretary Rice. Mr. 

 Rogers, of Hatton-garden, was applied to respecting the removal of a 

 most disgusting nuisance at Pentonville, whereby the neighbourhood 

 was scandalized, and the thoroughfares rendered impassable we 

 mean the wax-work exhibitions of Steinberg's atrocities referred to 

 in our last; but the expounder of " Burns' Justice" declared his in- 

 ability to mitigate the grievance. By way of a set off to the fore- 

 going, Mr. Chambers, of Marlborough-street, decided that a few 

 itinerant raspers of catgut, whose discordant concord attracted no very 

 select audience, were rogues and vagabonds. When the Duke of 

 Devonshire gives a fete, the Piccadilly pedestrians are unceremoniously 

 put to the rout., but " the perfumed chambers of the great" can not 

 perceive the harm of anti -plebeian disagreeables. One of the Mid- 

 dlesex Solons, in giving his veto against a [ tavern-keeper's music 

 license being renewed, expressed his conviction that " music and 

 dancing always led to the demoralization of females !" Look to this, 

 ye patronizers of the " light fantastic toe," eschew Fanny Elsler, and 

 convert Almack's into something better than a treadmill. 



THE TRUE TOUCHSTONE. In the celebrated will case at the 

 late assizes at Lancaster, which puzzled the collective wisdom of the 

 big wigs of the northern circuit for a fortnight, nearly two hundred 

 witnesses were examined. The facts elicited from such a host one 

 may easily suppose would convict Solomon of being a jackass. Mr. 

 Baron Bolland was examined, and expressed his thorough conviction 

 of the sanity of the testator and wherefore ? The reader will pro- 

 bably imagine that the legal functionary taxed the penetrative powers 

 of his deceased friend in the ramifications of a labyrinthian act of 

 parliament. No ; he tried him with an infinitely more subtle test. 

 The worthy dispenser of justice, it appears, had perpetrated a collec- 

 tion of what he called " poems," and submitted them to the critical 



