NOTES OF THE MONTH. 545 



man's " wonderful hanmmal" though it grows every year, te it is sup- 

 posed it never will come to its proper growth." Is it to be spread 

 out on the one side till it pushes that old tabby the Abbey " from its 

 stool ;" and on the other, till it takes Apsley House, with " the dear 

 Duke" included, like a chicken under its wings ? for, at present, we 

 see no likelihood of an end to it, though we could suggest one. Again 

 we ask, when will this brick-and-stone monster of Mr. Nash's dis- 

 torted imagination be finished ? 



" I do not know," 

 Says the great bell at Bow. 

 " When we grow rich," 

 Groan the poor of Shoreditch. 



That will be long, we fear ; but we are patient, and will wait. We 

 have grown grey since it began ; but we will welcome our inevitable 

 " lean and slippered pantaloons," if Mr. Nash will but name the me- 

 morable year when this darling of his old age will be fit to be seen. 

 We really long to behold the slabby-dabby baby of his brain standing 

 " all alone," as the nurses say, without its pinafore, the hoarding, 

 which now hides half its deformities its overgrowth of body and 

 distortion of limb. Well, we will live in hope some day to see it in 

 all its parts we will not say its parts, for it has none. At present, we 

 are not certain which is its head and which its tail. But to return to 

 our illustration of the penny showman, his reply to the inquiry of 

 his juvenile admirers, as to which was the lion and which the dogs, 

 will be equally applicable in this particular, " whichever you please, 

 my pretty little dears !" We have looked at its face till we were 

 puzzled ; and if that is its back which, as the late Lord Castlereagh 

 would have said, faces Pimlico, we should think that, like the Hot- 

 tentot Venus, its most remarkable features are behind. But again we 

 promise that we will wait : we shall, no doubt, be better informed in 

 the year 1844. 



BURNS AND THE PHRENOLOGISTS. Whatever else alters in this 

 alterable world, Folly, that adorable and adored ged of nonsense, 

 whims and oddities, and all idle crotchets, is still Cf himself alone." 

 He perphaps now and then changes the colour of his cap, and makes 

 an unimportant variation in the placing and position of his bells ; but 

 the fashion of the cap is still the same, and the jingle-jangle of the 

 bells is the same dull jargon of senseless sounds it ever .was. His 

 amusements may vary, as is natural to so capricious a genius in his 

 way ; but they are exactly of the same mental value, not a jot more 

 foolish than they were not a whit wiser. He, " good fool," holds 

 on " the even tenor of his way," while all besides are striking out into 

 new paths, and wandering this way and that, " in endless mazes lost." 

 But he has his occasional new crotchet too ; and lately he has taken 

 it into his ridiculous head to become a phrenologist; and now no man 

 who has had a double pair of meritorious brains can pay a visit to the 

 Capulets no one who has during the present century left his name 

 at their door escapes the hands of our scientific friend with the bells. 

 If an ingenious man is about to descend to the grave to-day, before 



M.M. No. 100. 4 A 



