1830.] A/airs in General. 581 



hitherto innocent, not to say laudable exclamations of ' Heaven bless 

 you!' ' Heaven keep your grace ;' and so forth, are high crimes and 

 misdemeanours in the critical eyes of our censor. The players, who 

 are rather a reprobate set, are thinking of going back to * 'slives,' 

 < 'sbloods,' adopted in the time of the Puritans ; for swearing in some 

 shape or other, it would seem, is one of the necessaries of stage life. It 

 is expected that Mr. Colman will shortly forbid the performance of his 

 own plays." 



The accident of Huskisson's death has thrown a covering over his 

 politics which we have no wish to remove. Death, that breaks ties, also 

 dissolves hostilities ; and whatever may be the resentment for a slippery 

 career, when a sense of public dignity would have made it a straight- 

 forward one, and a successful one too ; no sentiment can now be felt, but 

 of pity for the miserable and sudden extinction of his career. An in- 

 stance is mentioned of his recording the absurdity of that ambition, 

 which, in the highest instance of human talents and fortune, only be- 

 trayed its victim to shame and chains. 



When he was in office, he was presented with the chair which the 

 exiled Emperor of France usually occupied during his dismal sojourn at 

 Longwood. On this relic Mr. Huskisson appeared to set a great value, 

 and a place was appropriated to it in his library. He had also a small 

 brass plate affixed to the chair, on which the period when it was pre- 

 sented to him, and some other particulars, were engraved ; to which the 

 following lines from Byron's Ode to Napoleon, were added : 



" Nor till thy fall could mortals guess 

 Ambition's less than nothingness." 



Yet, with this unparalleled lesson before his eye, he suffered himself 

 to be the instrument of men altogether inferior to himself, to seek an 

 unsatisfactory power, and be cast out, and called back again, by the 

 most ridiculous cabinet that ever furnished food for ridicule. 



It is considered a formidable thing to be mulcted for another man's 

 debts, or act as papa to another man's offspring. Yet what are those, 

 to the calamity of fathering another man's joke ? Gay Rogers, witty 

 Luttrel, and rich Lord Alvanly, are at present the universal sufferers. 

 Every bad pun, intolerable story, and ponderous witticism engendered 

 within the bills of mortality, is as regularly laid to their account, as 

 the increase of indecorums in the neighbourhood of Bow-street is laid 

 to the account of that greatest of lawyers, Sir Richard Birnie. The most 

 remorseless jeux d'esprit, are as invariably laid to their charge, as 

 an unowned murder to the first Irishman one meets. Exploded jests 

 come back on their hands, as habitually as Miss Dolabella's borrowed 

 novels come back to the circulating library, noted and pencilled at all 

 the elopements and Doctors'-Commons descriptions ; or as the finery 

 of the Easter balls reverts to Moorfields ; or as blind puppies find their 

 way to the horse-pond by the dozen at a time. We look upon their 

 state of existence as not to be borne, and advise a prosecution, and 

 the nailing of an anti-nuisance board over Lord Alvanly 's fair fame 

 " No puns to be perpetnited here." What punishment, for instance, 

 could be too severe for the aggressor who inflicted the injury, of the 

 following abomination on Lord Alvanly : 



