700 Notes of the Month [JUNE, 



of the gratitude of the Bourbons ; for les dieux de la danse are the 

 very household gods of the Parisians ; and in spite of the Duchess of 

 Angouleme, they would rather give up a host of heels than one of these 

 their penates " 



But Field Marshal First Lord of the Treasury Laporte tells a very 

 different story, goes round the printing world with an indefatigable 

 smile, and pledges his laurels that Taglioni and the other Parisian bril- 

 liants are already inlisted with him, and that they shall arid will con- 

 descend to delight and dazzle the John Bull eye before the sun has gone 

 another sign down the zodiac. 



Our lovers of liberty exclaim furiously against the restraints laid by 

 the French government on those opera people But " our withers are 

 unwrung ;" we have no tears for the fetters which compel a figurante to 

 limit the display of her figure to Paris, and keep herself, her antics, and 

 her vices, a couple of hundred miles from the plunder of London. 

 When we recollect what a set opera people are, the notorious habits of 

 their lives, and the results upon English society, we should feel no in- 

 curable anguish if the whole establishment were prohibited from ever 

 setting foot in England. 



One of our English absurdities is the sudden importance that a man 

 assumes in society by deserving total exclusion from it. The wretch 

 who lives by thieving or housebreaking is, of course, looked on as he 

 deserves, while he happens to be out of jail. But the moment of his 

 detection erects him into a public object. The sentimental make 

 speeches about him, and the lovers of Magna Charta discover that liberty 

 and property are violated in every restraint on his volition. 



At a meeting of the Middlesex Magistrates, Sir George Hampson pro- 

 posed that refractory convicts in the House of Correction should have 

 their hair cut off, for not conforming to the prison discipline. The mo- 

 tion was lost, but another to the same effect as regards females was 

 carried. It is hinted that n celebrated perruquier means to contract with 

 the visiting magistrates for the crop, as jalse fronts are now much used 

 by the haut ton. The forensic wig-makers will give any price for grey 

 locks, as the gentlemen of the gown have abjured powder. 



Some of our contemporaries instantly exclaimed against the horrors 

 of cutting off a felon's hair. Yet except so far as it might impair his 

 beauty, we see no great harm done. That it may be a more painful 

 operation than flogging, or more embarrassing to the bodily frame than 

 chains, or more toilsome than a month's hard labour, we have not heard ; 

 though we do not mean to dispute the statement when we shall have 

 heard it. But in our plain style of thinking, as prisons were made for 

 keeping felons in order, we cannot see the serious injury of making them 

 orderly, even by means of such melancholy severity as cutting off 

 the flowing honours of their brows. The infliction appears to have been 

 exercised upon the females, who might be supposed to care more about 

 their ringlets ; and yet we have had neither a petition to parliament nor a 

 rebellion in the prison ; and in this opinion we shall be likely to remain, 

 until shaving is declared contrary to the Rights of Man ! 



O'Connell is making an ass of himself. The fact is beyond all denial. 

 His brawling does very well in the Corn Exchange, where he has a mob 



