294 The London-Bridge Lion. [[Sept. 



you are worn out, fatigued down to the very depths of exhaustion, by a 

 biographized influenza, you may find some relief perhaps in turning to a 

 dropsy. If a friend forces upon you the secret-memoirs of all his 

 cramps and rheumatics for the last fifteen years, and chains down your 

 attention to a splendid collection of colds gathered in various quarters of 

 the world from his infancy — you suffer a martyrdom, but then the thing 

 is done with ; and when he visits you again, he comes with a fit of the 

 gout — which of course you heartly wish him. Here there is change 

 and variety — but with your sight-seers you have no hope. They are 

 worse than the cuckoo, for they have only one note. While a wonder 

 lasts, you hear from the dense mass of marvellers, but one exclamation, 

 even to the last hour of the nine days. Like Paganini, they play upon a 

 single string. This violin-lion, by the way, will supply an illustration. 

 Let the reader, whoever he may be, and in whatever class of society he 

 may move, consider for a quarter of an hour, and endeavour to calculate 

 how many times within the last three months, and by how many persons, 

 he has been saluted with this question — " Have you seen Paganini .'' " We 

 rest our argument upon his reply. He knows very well that the num- 

 ber is beyond the reach of arithmetic. 



There are places where you can evade the jaws of this English inqui- 

 sition. In company you can parry the query by vipsetting some wine 

 over a lady's dress, or treading on somebody's toe, and then begging his 

 pardon, just by way of changing the conversation. In the street you can 

 ^ feign a creditor coming (perhaps it will not be necessary to feign one), 

 , or you can see somebody turning a corner that you would not miss for 

 the world, or you can have left something in a hackney-coach upon 

 the last stand — or you can faint and be carried into a chemist's. 

 Should all these fail, and it become necessary to fight it out, begin, in- 

 stead of giving an answer, with Schedule A. of the Bill, and go through 

 it down to Colonel Sibthorpe's thunder that Lord Chandos borrowed the 

 other day. The means will be desperate, but the remedy will be perfect. 

 Here there are outlets of escape — crannies through which you can creep, 

 to the derangement only of your habitual placidity and courteousness of 

 demeanour. But to be edged up in a corner, to be pinned to the wall, 

 to be placed as it were in a vice, with a sight-describer's fangs at your 

 button, and his " sublimes !" and " beautifuls !" ringing in your ear — 

 to know that you have heard the same story from seven other historians 

 since breakfast, and to feel that you are getting it by heart — that there 

 is no escape, and that you must resign yourself to your fate ; it is then 

 that the whole system of society, and the boasted purity of our laAvs, be- 

 comes most lamentably ludicrous. Why should they give one class of 

 the community the privilege to talk, and not protect another from the 

 consequences ! If a man were to forcibly pour a glass of Cape Madeira 

 down my throat, I should obtain a triumphant verdict even from a jury 

 of wine-merchants ; yet, the very next hour, he may pour something 

 equally as revolting to my taste into my ear, and I have no remedy, no 

 consolation, but that of knowing that he has served all my friends in the 

 same way. People are obliged to take out licences to shoot — and why 

 not to talk ? Many carry tongues, but few know the use of them. 

 They ramble about with their instruments of mischief always loaded, 

 destruction is scattered around them, and yet there are no coroners' in- 

 quests. The year is, to them, one continued first of September — and to 

 us a first of April. In fact, they are moi'e mischievous than their fellow- 



