298 Letter on Affairs in general. [MARCH, 



riment curling and frizzing away, with both comb and irons at the 

 worsted chevelure of a new mop. 



LAW OF LIBEL : THE IDIOT SMITH. I feel great pleasure in men- 

 tioning this case once more, in order to shew that the discussion which has 

 arisen upon it has not been quite without its utility in the country. The 

 facts were stated, I believe fully, in our Magazine for January last, there- 

 fore I shall not repeat them. It appears by the papers of to-day, that 

 another action the fifth or sixth I think on the same question has been 

 brought against a provincial paper, called The Wolverhampton Chronicle. 

 And, for the vry same act the copying a paragraph from the Salopian 

 Journal which the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, in the action 

 against the Times, called " an offence, against God and man" and for 

 which the jury, in the case of the Birmingham Chronicle, gave Four 

 hundred pounds damages the jury in the case of the Wolverhampton 

 Chronicle, have given a verdict of Damages, One Farthing. 



Translators especially on works of fancy make very whimsical mis- 

 takes sometimes ; where they know only the language which they are 

 translating, without knowing any of the customs or peculiarities of the 

 country to which the language belongs. And the selection or adoption of 

 proper names arid localities in works of the same kind, where the author lays 

 his scene in a country of which he is ignorant, or half informed, are often 

 equally ridiculous. The French novelists, until within these few years, 

 always gave their English heroes the most extraordinary names as, 

 " Milord Brompton" " The Marquis Smith" or, " The Duke of 

 Jones.'* And probably, very often, when our " Minerva Press" romance 

 writers fancy they have given their French or Italian count or prince for 

 there is no getting on in a story with any dignitaries less than these the 

 most romantic and euphonious title in the world, he in reality enjoys- 

 considered by a native some particularly vulgar or ridiculous appellation. 

 A lady, the other day, publishing a novel in Paris, and placing the action 

 in England, gives an exquisitely pre-eminent example of this kind of error. 

 Wishing to give her work a title, which shall convey the very extreme of 

 romance and horror, she calls it " Les Souterrains de Birmingham /" 



The exploits of that abominable class of persons, called the Resurrec- 

 tion men, have got to such a pitch as to spread consternation through 

 the country. And the medical students, too, have lately become so presump- 

 tuous on the subject, that it is nothing but a mercy and the extent of their 

 charity that they don't take possession of us, as we walk about the streets 

 staring, and alive ! A whole"surgical academy attended the other day 

 at a coroner's inquest, on a question whether some unhappy man, who 

 had died in an hospital, should or should not be opened to ascertain 

 whether it was really the falling of a house upon his head that had killed 

 him or riot ! and one incipient rogue- not higher than a pot of lenitive 

 electuary defied the coroner, and protested he should like to have the 

 cutting up of the jury. But, in our desire to reconcile appearances with 

 expediency in this case, as in many others, it is whimsical to see the 

 manner in which we administer the law. We punish a man severely 

 whom we find keeping two dead bodies locked up in a stable or a cellar ; 

 but we say nothing to any body when we find ten locked up in a surgeon's 

 dissecting room. A man applies to the magistrates at Bow-street con- 

 cerning his " lost relative;" and is sent (as of course) with an officer, to 

 look for him at St. Thomas's Hospital. But, among the various sub- 

 jects" which are met with there, they are " unable to identify the missing 



