648 Notes of the Month on [ June, 
most vigorous journal gasps for life, like a mouse in an exhausted re- 
ceiver. Like the garrison in a famishing town, every food is swallowed 
with the most unhesitating avidity. A Bow-street examination, with 
the legal remarks of Sir Richard Birnie, or the dignified observations 
on men and manners, that make Mr. Hall memorable, is, at this period, 
of inestimable importance ; the fall of an old house, or the overthrow — 
of an old woman, the death of a peer, or the report of a mad dog, have _ 
their value ; and if the proprietors of such papers ever pray, a new gun- 
powder-plot would be the thing most devoutly prayed- for. Battle, 
murder, and sudden death, would be so far from being deprecated, that, 
in all probability, the most ardent aspirations of their secret souls 
would be sent up for some handsome affair, in the shape of, at least, a 
six months’ convulsion. A new conspiracy, with a knot of the peerage 
implicated, would offer a prospect infinitely cheering. The first sur- 
mise, the sudden detection, the general seizure, the examination before 
the Privy Council, the ten cabinet councils a day, the escapes of 
some, and the defences of others, with the final retribution of the law, 
would form a promise of active paragraphs, long columns, and inquisi- 
tive purchasers, that no patriotism could resist ; and we should not be 
surprised to hear of a general combination of the journalists for the express 
purpose, with some new Thistlewood urged to take the lead of a host 
conspirators. Still a great deal may be done out of moderate materials, 
where the talent of paragraph exists: and we give the account of Mr. 
Augustus Woodthorpe’s porcine manufacture, as a happy instance of the 
art of making something out of nothing —“ Mr. Augustus Woodthorpe, 
of Boston, seems to have acquired the singular knack of feeding pigs 
until they resemble bullocks in size. Some years ago he travelled 
through the country exhibiting a huge mountain of hog’s flesh, which 
gained the prize at the Smithfield Show. Grunter the First being con- 
signed to the tomb, another of the same kind has been puffed out, and 
reached the enormous weight of ninety-five stone. Having attained 
this happy stage of fatness, his honour was marched into a caravan, and 
exhibited to the wondering natives of Boston, last Saturday. To 
increase the effect, Mr. Woodthorpe has ingeniously procured a very 
dwarfish pig, two years old, weighing only forty pounds, which stands 
beside the mighty giant, strongly reminding the spectator of the frog 
and the ox in the fable.” 
In ordinary hands this intelligence would not have filled three lines. 
But the writer is palpably a man of genius in his department, and we 
doubt whether the simple art of fatting a pig has ever been detailed in a 
more graphic manner. We doubt as little that this happily concocted des- 
cription has attracted more eyes among the rustic readers of newspapers, 
than the bulletins of the Russian campaigns ; and that there is no one cir- 
cumstance of village life which might not be made profitable and _pic- 
turesque bythe same ability. We say to the writer, as Cato said to the 
young Roman,“ Macte virtute tua:” make the most of your talent, de- 
scribe our plagiarisms from the French stage, and make them palatable ; 
become the historian of a session of parliament, and give it an air of 
rationality ; turn modern public architecture into a subject of public 
congratulation ; make us imagine wit in a masquerade, pleasure in a 
rout, patriotism in a club-room of either Whig or Tory, piety in a 
fashionable chapel; or virtue, generosity, or good sense, in one out of 
every ten thousand of mankind. These will be the triumphs of the couleur 
