Notes of the Month, 335 



grammar is not like the morality of a certain journalist beyond suspicion) 

 and if the faction are about to grasp power again, nature gives warning of the 

 guilty thing's approach. The advent of Macbeth to the consummation of his 

 fell design was heralded by the tumbling down of chimney-pots ; and if we 

 judge of his iniquity by such portentous indications, what shall we say is 

 intimated by the hurricane of lamp-posts tiles and sky-lights, coping-stones, 

 window-sills and geranium-pots, umbrellas donkey-carts and weather-cocks, 

 wherewith the metropolis, yea, Fulham, Mile-End, Camberwell, and the Lord 

 knows where, were visited a few weeks ago ! 



SHAKSPEARB AND THE PARSONS. Our readers are aware that a sub- 

 scription has been some time on foot for the restoration of Shakspeare's 

 Monument, and the general preservation of the church wherein his remains 

 are deposited at Stratford- upon- Avon. Of the propriety of such subscription 

 there can be but one opinion ; and, in looking through the published lists, we 

 were pleased to see the names of several clergymen in the immediate vicinity 

 of the birth-place of the immortal bard down for sums of various amounts. 

 So far so well. But, on the twenty-sixth ult., there was held, in the town 

 already mentioned, a violent Tory meeting, followed by a dinner, whereat were 

 assembled no less than fifteen parsons, though there were only twenty-five 

 guests present whose names were thought worthy of being mentioned at all. 

 Of all places in the world the spot chosen for this demonstration of political 

 acerbity and religious intolerance was Shakspeare's Hall ; and therein these 

 fifteen men of God waxed eloquent in denouncing the majority of their fellow- 

 subjects as incendiaries and infidels. In Shakspeare's Hall, these meek and 

 lowly followers of the Fisherman of Galilee rose reeking from their viands 

 and strong drink, and protested in the name of the God of all charity, that 

 it was impiety to resist the grasping avarice of churchmen, and treason to 

 dispute the supremacy of Toryism. The rector, the Rev. Dr. Davenport, a 

 man of exceedingly advanced years, and who has been mentioned respectfully 

 in conjunction with Shakspeare's memory, mumbled out his scarcely audible 

 antipathies to the growing spirit of the times, affording the awful spectacle 

 of a man who has outlived the consciousness of his own imbecility, but whose 

 unchristian spitefulness nor years nor infirmities can extinguish. Shak- 

 speare and the Parsons " such names mingled !" We wonder the sanctified 

 wassailers did not drink to his deathless memory as a high church man. 

 Why, if they were not blinded by their unholy fanaticism to all sense of 

 decency or propriety, the mere thought of their being in a locality associated 

 with his name, should have taught them that charity they were ordained and 

 are paid to preach, but which they ridicule by their example and"caricature by 

 almost every act of their lives. Shakspeare wrote for the great family of man- 

 kind, and not to pander to the splenetic feelings of a faction that would usurp 

 dominion over the whole human brotherhood. Shakspeare's admirers,his true 

 admirers those who have profited by the wondrous wisdom of his inculcations, 

 are to be found in the English people at large, and not in a fraction thereof ; 

 and when the English people are called upon to subscribe to his monument will 

 they the more readily respond because a congregation of " ungracious pastors" 

 desecrate the sanctity of his temple, and stigmatize every man who does not 

 believe as they do, as disloyal to the crown and offensive to God ? There has 

 been no ebullition of Tory animosity made within the last twelve months more 

 vindictive and acrimonious than at this Stratford-upon-Avon exhibition, and 

 it was not the less repugnant because of its extreme dulness and stupidity. 

 Your most determined haters are invariably your piety-mongers. If their 

 malevolence was equalled by their cunning for wisdom they have none we 

 had better live in holes peopled by scorpions ; but by a wise ordinance, their 

 rancour not unfrequently recoils upon themselves, and in their fears good 

 men find safety from their malice. But it is not the foolish because impo- 

 tent chagrin of these fifteen anointed revilers of the tithe-paying people of the 

 empire that annoys us. Had they croaked till doomsday, their auditors 



