554 Notes of the Month on QNov. 



proper to give their attention to politics. He has removed his pictures, 

 statues, and principal furniture, and is gone to the country, where he 

 will have a better protection about him, than the white-gloved gentle- 

 men of the lounging police. The Duke of Newcastle's house in Port- 

 man-square, is boarded up, to prevent the further visits of the " most 

 thinking" rabble ; and the Duke of Wellington has very wisely followed 

 the same course for the same reasons. His grace has taken the matter 

 with his usual coolness, and has even dropped a witticism on the occa- 

 sion, if we are to rely on report, — " Before the duke boarded up all his 

 windows, on its being suggested that he should place his house under 

 the care of a police officer, he jocularly replied, that ' he could only 

 depend on Mr. Plank.' " 



In the mean time all these removals must act very agreeably on the 

 revenues of the tradesmen in the neighbourhood of those noblemen. 

 But what is beggary or bankruptcy to a cheesemonger, " if he has his 

 rights," or gets the ten thousandth part of the glory of carrying Mr. 

 Joseph Hume into the House of Commons as member for JMarylebone ? 



We have often fought the Reverend Edward Irving's battles. Others 

 gave him up, said that his invention was flagging, that he was become 

 dull, dry-brained, hum-drum, and all the rest, as the dramatists say. 

 We, on the contrary, always insisted on it, that he was not merely at 

 the head of all notoriety, from the first minute of his Hatton Garden 

 debut, but that he would so continue ; that he had more talents for 

 keeping up the ball than Liston, more odd novelty than Kean, and 

 more studied and practical grimace than Grimaldi. The world of 

 London abounds with the evidence of our fact. We pass over his 

 whiskers, his fall of hair, his monstrosities of dress, deportment, and 

 doctrine — those were cleverly conceived and shewed the master, but 

 they were subordinate affairs. But we appeal to the dexterity with 

 which he made the world repeat his name, when it was already 

 expiring ; in the instance of his plucking out his watch and seals and 

 throwing them upon the receivers' plate, with an appropriate hai'angue, 

 at the meeting of the Bible Society. Then came his quarrel with the 

 Scotch Church, a capital flapper to his dying notoriety, and which 

 brought all the tongues of all the Scotch from the equator to the poles 

 upon him at once ; made him ludicrous, absurd, and anathematized, 'tis 

 true — but still made him talked of. 



This too had its day, and down he went again. Again his new 

 chance was lucky ; his field-preaching vanquished Punch after a long 

 struggle, and drove him from the field, or fields, of St. Pancras ; and 

 though the victor himself was finally put to the rout by IMiss Rebecca 

 Chainstitch, the celebrated Indian tailor's daughter from America, who 

 is under a vow to preach in every field of the British empire, convert 

 all the kings of Christendom, knit stockings until the general conflagra- 

 tion, and marry the great Cham of Tartary the day after (vide her 

 proposals) ; this rencontre produced a very tolerable harvest of notoriety. 



But what can last for ever ! The preachers fame went down again. 

 People thought more of ]M. ]\Iartin the lion-fighter, and his lions, than 

 of the most whiskered orator on this side of the Antipodes ; and another 

 week would have seen him fairly forgotten ; when, lo, came another 

 stroke of prosperity. The papers shall tell it in their own words : — 



" The Rev. E. Irving. — This gentleman's attraction seems to fail. 



