1829.] Afairs in General. 199 



fare worse, yet things are turning up now and then that our most bene- 

 volent scepticism cannot resist. The fact, for instance, of building a 

 palace in the shape of a lazaret or bedlam, and the expenditure of half a 

 million of money on it, without producing an insurrection, is no longer a 

 matter of denial. The fact is clear, and we have nothing to do but to 

 cry with the poet, " 'tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true." But 

 among other plunders of the imagination, they are going to rob us of the 

 ■unicorn. For two thousand years and upwards, a short date in the 

 history of liuman quarrel about nothings, the sages of this world have 

 been doubting and deciding on the existence of this showy creature. 

 Pliny would have sworn to his having all but seen it, and he would have 

 sworn that too, if any one had taken the trouble to ask him. Kircher, 

 and a few of the German naturalists, and black-letter fools — every natur- 

 alist and black-letter man being more or less a fool — dug up tlie question 

 out of the pit of Teutonic dulness, and ever since, every traveller beyond 

 the Needles, has had his theory, which was quite as good as his fact, and 

 his fact, which was quite as good as his theory. 



The topic perished in Germany, being stifled under Professor Bopp 

 and Sanscrit, Professor Semler and Scepticism, Professor Jahn and 

 Jacobinism, and the whole vast feather-bed suffocation of Professor Kotze- 

 bue and Comedy. But in England it was endeared to us by associa- 

 tions " deep in every truly British heart," as the chairmen of our tavern 

 parties say over their third bottle. We had seen it for ages gallantly 

 climbing the slippery heights of the kingly crown on show boards, car- 

 riages, transparencies, theatres, and the new, matchless, hydropuric, or 

 fiery and watery fairy palace of Vauxhall. It met us in every material, 

 from the gilt conjitures of Bartholemew fair, to the gold plateau of the 

 " table laid for sixty," at St. James's. All the dilettanti were immersed 

 m the great national question of its shape and features. ]\Ir. Barrow, in 

 a journey of exploration, which extended to three miles beyond the 

 Cape, believed that he saw it, but strongly doubted its existence. M. 

 Vaillant never saw it, nor believed that any one ever did, but was as sure 

 of its existence as if it had slept in his bosom, and been unto him as a 

 daughter. ]\Ir. Russel had one, which he milked twice a day, and drove 

 m a curricle to visit the queen of IMadagascar. Doctor Lyall is writing 

 a quai'to from IVIadagascar, to deny the statement in toto ; admitting, 

 however, that there is a rumour of the being of some nondescript of the 

 kind in the mountains, somewhat between the size of the elephant and the 

 Shetland pony ; but that he and we think the subject-matter will turn out 

 asinine. But now a Mr. Ruppell, after a long sojourn in the north-east 

 of Africa, comes at once to cheer and dishearten us by the discovery, 

 that in Kordofan, if any one knows where that is, the unicorn exists ; 

 stated to be of the size of a small horse, of the slender make of the gazelle, 

 and furnished with a long, straight, slender horn in the male, which was 

 wanting in the female. According to the statements made by various 

 persons, it inhabits the deserts to the south of Kordofan, is uncommonly 

 fleet, and comes only occasionally to the Koldagi Heive mountains on the 

 borders of Kordofan. This, it must be acknowledged, is a sad falling 

 off from the rival of the lion, that we have honoured so long in the arms 

 of England. But we sincerely hope, that by the next arrival, it will not 

 degenerate into a cow, or worse, a goat. But he tells us, that to our 

 kno\yledge of the giraffe he has added considerably. He obtained in 

 Nubia and Kordofan five specimens, two of which were males and three 



