1831. J Affair* in General. 443 



We are vastly at a loss to perceive the allusion in the following receipt 

 for angling : 



" How to catch a Gudgeon. While your gudgeon is engaged, taking leave 

 of the rest of your family, retire quietly into another room, where he is sure to 

 pass. (By all me-'ns take care that you don't sit in a dark corner on the 

 contrary, select, if possible, a window opposite the door). Leave the door 

 just so far open, and no more, that any one passing it cannot fail to observe 

 you. As soon as you hear his foot in the passage, begin your blubbering and 

 caterwauling. No real gudgeon can resist this. Before he has been well three 

 miles on his journey, he will be seen returning, with distended jaws, to swallow 

 the white bait !" 



Yet what is the Bath System, the Brighton, the Harrowgate, the 

 Cheltenham, or any of those spots where the fair do congregate to ensure 

 the grand object of life, a husband; but variety of gudgeoning? Isaak 

 Walton himself was never half so accurate in his flies, so delicate in 

 his discrimination of lucky and unlucky moments, so adroit in the cast 

 of his line, nor so active in dropping into his basket the finny prey, of 

 which he writes with such tender enthusiasm, as the multitude of 

 " female fishers of men," who haunt the shady corners of those favoured 

 places, and angle from dewy morn to dusky eve. The new feature of 

 the science is, that the whole practice is now in the hands of the ladies. 

 Time was when the fishery was in the hands of the pantalooned sex ; 

 when an Irish buck came as regularly on his campaign to Bath, and 

 danced away with an heiress, as the Bath ball-room opened its doors. 

 The French marquis, all essences and cotillons, made an occasional 

 catch among the daughters of rich old West Indians, fools enough to 

 send their half-castes to learn the languages in the city of Bladucl, and 

 the London man, of Bond-street, adjourned from the clubs to make 

 up his losses among the jointured. But all this has past away with the 

 dreams of the past. The ladies now have the trade in their own corporation, 

 and where it is their will to bring the spoil to their net, we defy any 

 duke in England to be sure of his fate an hour. 



One of the most direct and singular results of the late French Revo* 

 lution has been the ruin of bankers. The aristocracy of paper, which 

 seemed to have been concocting into a haughty shape in every capital of 

 Europe, and which was presenting its cashiers to be made barons, dukes, 

 and in good time, kings too, has suffered some heavy blows ; and we 

 may now live in faithful expectation that the throne will not be seized upon 

 for some years more, by any of those gentlemen who have been in the 

 habit of making their per centage on the discount of bills or the transfer 

 of stock. The shock in France is formidable. All the counters have felt an 

 earthquake, and all the grandees of the five per cents are selling off their 

 estates, their dozen barouches a-piece, and throwing up their Opera 

 boxes. Another leading house has fallen a few days ago. The minor 

 ones are, we may presume, in no very enviable condition, and the 

 shopkeepers are turning royalists as fast as they can. We are not quite 

 so fond of dealing in revolutions here, but, if report say true, some of 

 the potentates, even here, who deal in foreign stock and politics, are 

 likely enough to indulge us with the march of a gambler's history. 



On the vote being moved for the expences of the British Museum, 

 Sir John Wrottesley observed on the public inconvenience sustained by 



3 L 2 



