642 Notes of the Month on [June, 
Death, the only law that is never violated, is rapidly striking away 
all the names that figured in our youth. The bar, the senate, and 
the stage, have lost, in quick succession, nearly every eminent name. 
Lady Derby has just gone: she who, when manners were a science, 
was their supreme representative ; who, in the wittiest, gayest, and 
most graceful day of the last century, was the observed of all 
observers; the toast of the Hares, Townshends, and Burgoynes ; 
the heroine of every stage, and the model of every theatrieal aspi- 
rant, has laid her graces in the grave, and now sleeps where neither 
fame nor flattery can reach her more... The life of an actress is, 
proverbially, of a “ mingled yarn,” and perhaps no human lot so 
thoroughly acquaints the individual with the pleasantnesses and the 
pains of life. But Miss Farren seems to have had all the roses for her 
own ; almost from the commencement of her career, she was a public 
favourite. Her fine theatrical powers were instantly acknowledged, and 
the style of her performances gave, invariably, the impression of an 
original elegance of mind. She had the higher merit of preserving 
herself from the peculiar hazards of her profession ; and her marriage 
with Lord Derby, at once rewarded and raised into affluence and rank, 
an actress whose personal conduct did honour to her sex, as it undoubt- 
edly added highly to the public respect for the stage. She thenceforth 
enjoyed a long career of opulent tranquillity. She quitted the stag 
in 1797, after just twenty years of success, and was Countess of Derb 
two-and-thirty years. She was born in 1759. 
We have no conceivable respect for Mr. Maberley as a politician, a 
financier, or a money-dealer ; even in his capacity of bazaar-keeper and cab 
speculator, our admiration of him is by no means vivid ; yet, as Fox said 
of Jack Ketch, such men are useful in society, and we wish he would 
exert his faculties in a new speculation, and give us something in place 
of our hackney coaches. Nothing in nature or art can be so abominable 
as those vehicles at this hour. We are quite satisfied that, except an 
Englishman—who will endure any thing—no native of any climate under 
the sky would endure a London hackney coach; that an Ashantee 
gentleman would scoff at it ; and that an aboriginal of New South Wales 
would refuse to be inhumed within its shattered and infinite squalidness. 
It is true, that the vehicle has its merits, if variety of uses can establish 
them. The hackney coach conveys alike the living and the dead. It 
carries the dying man to the hospital, and when doctors and tax- 
gatherers can tantalize no more, it carries him to Surgeons’ Hall, and 
qualifies him to assist the “ march of mind” by the section of body. 
If the midnight thie? find his plunder too ponderous for his hands, the_ 
hackney coach offers its services, and is one of the most expert convey- 
ances. Its other employments are many, and equally meritorious, and 
doubtless society would find a vacuum in its loss. Yet we cordially 
wish that the Maberley brain were set at work upon this subject, and 
some substitute contrived. The French have led the way, and that too 
by the most obvious and simple arrangement possible. The “ Omnibus,” 
—for they still have Latin enough in France for the name of this travelling 
collection of all sorts of human beings—the Omnibus is a long coach, 
carrying fifteen or eighteen people, all inside. For two-pence halfpenny 
it carries the individual the length of the Boulevard, or the whole 
diameter of Paris. Of those carriages there were about half-a-dozen 
s 
