KIDD'S LONDON JOURNAL. 



47 



below ; and clown the aforesaid passage, 

 divided only by a paling from the spacious 

 premises where her earthenware and coarser 

 kinds of crockery were deposited — were the 

 public-house stables, cowhouses, and pig- 

 sties of Mr. James Tyler, who added to his 

 calling of publican, the several capacities 

 of milkman, cattle dealer, and pig merchant, 

 so that the place was one constant scene ot 

 dirt, and noise, and bustle, without and 

 within ; this Old Red Cow, in spite of its 

 unpromising locality, being one of the best 

 frequented houses in Belford : the constant 

 resort of drovers, drivers, and cattle dealers ; 

 with a market dinner on Wednesdays and 

 Saturdays, and a club, called the Jolly 

 Tailors, every Monday night. 



Master James Tyler, popularly called Jem, 

 was the very man to secure and increase 

 this sort of custom. Of vast stature and 

 extraordinary physical power, combined with 

 a degree of animal spirits, not often found 

 in combination with such large proportions, 

 he was at once a fit ruler over his four-footed 

 subjects in the yard, a miscellaneous and 

 most disorderly collection of cows, horses, 

 pigs, and oxen, to say nothing of his own 

 five boys (for Jem was a widower), each 

 of whom, in striving to remedy, was apt to 

 enhance the confusion, and an admirable 

 lord of misrule at the drovers' dinners and 

 tradesmen's suppers, over which he presided. 

 There was a mixture of command and good- 

 humor, of decision and fun, in the gruff, 

 bluff, weather-beaten countenance, sur- 

 mounted with its rough shock of coal-black 

 hair, and in the voice, loud as a Stentor> with 

 which he now guided a drove of oxen, and 

 now roared a catch, that his listeners in 

 either case found irresistible. Jem Tyler was 

 the very spirit of vulgar jollity ; and (\ould, 

 as he boasted, run, leap, box, wrestle, drink, 

 sing, and shoot (he had been a keeper in his 

 youth, and still retained the love of sports- 

 manship, which those who imbibe it early, 

 seldom lose) with any man in the county. 

 He was discreet, too, for a man of his occu- 

 pation ; knew precisely how drunk a journey- 

 man tailor ought to get, and when to stop a 

 fight between a Somersetshire cattle-dealer 

 and an Irish pig-driver. No inquest had 

 ever sat upon any of his customers. Small 

 wonder, that, with such a landlord, the Old 

 Red Cow should be a hostelry of unmatched 

 resort and unblemished reputation ! 



Matst — being a reasonable, and so a thinking 

 creature, there is nothing more worthy of his 

 " being" than the right direction and employment 

 of his thoughts, since upon this depends both his 

 usefulness to the public and his own present and 

 future benefit in all respects. — W. Penn. 



HISTORICAL COINCIDENCES. 

 Barclay and Perkins. 



Have you ever amused yourself by tracing 

 historical parallels? Did you ever note how 

 often one age reflects the character of another, so 

 that the stage of real life seems to us at intervals 

 as a theatre on which we see represented the 

 passions of the past, its political tendencies, and 

 moniecl speculations ; the only change being that 

 of costume, and a wider but more modified me- 

 thod of action? So true it is that men change, 

 institutions vary, and that human nature is al- 

 ways the same. The church reproduces its 

 Laud, the railway exchange its Law, the bench 

 has its Mansfield, the Horse Guards its greater 

 Marlborough, and Newgate its Mrs. Brownrigg. 

 We have giants as great as King Charles's por- 

 ter, and a Tom Thumb who would have fright- 

 ened the very ghosts of all departed Jeffery 

 Hudsons — a class not generally accused of fear, 

 except at daybreak — by his unequalled diminu- 

 tiveness. Take the great questions which agitate 

 the church and the senate- house, which agitated 

 them in the sixteenth, during much of the two 

 following centuries, and you will find the same 

 theological, political, commercial, and sanitary 

 questions debated with equal honesty, equal 

 truth, and similar prospects of satisfactory solu- 

 tion. I confess, however, that for one historical 

 coincidence I was unprepared ; and that " Barclay 

 and Perkins," in the case of assault upon a noted 

 public character, should have an historical ante- 

 cedent in the seventeenth century, has caused me 

 some surprise. It is not necessary for me to 

 recall to your attention how Barclay and Perkins 

 were noised about on the occasion of the attack 

 on General Haynau. The name of the firm was 

 as familiar to our lips as their porter: — ■ 



" Never came reformation in a flood 

 "With, such a heady currance." 



There had been no similar emeute, as I was 

 told by a civic wit, since the days of " Vat Tyler." 

 Now let me remind you of the Barclay and 

 Perkins and the other Turnham Green men's 

 plot, who conspired to assault and assassinate 

 King William III. Mind, the coincidence is 

 only in name. The historic parallel is rather 

 of kind than event, but it is not the less re- 

 markable when we consider the excitement twice 

 connected with these names. The character of 

 James II. may be described as the villainy of 

 weakness. It possessed nothing of elevation, 

 breadth, or strength. It was this weak obliquity 

 which made him deceive his people, and led 

 him to subvert the laws, supplant the church, 

 and to become a tyrant in the name of religious 

 liberty. His means to recover the throne were 

 as mean as the manner of its desertion was des- 

 picable. He tried cajolery, it failed ; the bravery 

 of his Irish soldiers, it was unavailing. He next 

 relied on the corruption of Russell, the avarice 

 of Marlborough; but as these men were to be 

 bought as well as sold, he put his trust finally in 

 any villain who was willing to be hired for as- 

 sassination. In 1692 M. de Grandval, a captain 

 of dragoons, was shot in the allied camp, who 



