The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 386, August 22, 1829

To have Style

"To have style is to be always dressed to perfection, without appearing to care about the fashion; and to take the station and precedence which you are entitled to, without seeming to be solicitous about it. I have seen dowagers at watering-places in a fever of anxiety about their rank and their consequence! patronizing puppetshows, seizing conspicuous seats, and withholding the sunshine of their smiles from commoners allied to older nobility than their own! How I should enjoy seeing them lost in a London crowd, where not an eye would notice their aristocracy unless they wore their coronets on the tops of their bonnets!"

The Popular Complaint

"I am afraid of catching the popular complaint: all the professedly sane people in London are so evidently mad, that I am led to conclude that all the supposed lunatics are in their sound senses.

"For instance, your gay people, who toil through nominal pleasures, dressing by rule and compass, lacing, bracing, patching, painting, plastering, penciling, curling, pinching, and all to go out and be looked at: going from party to party in the middle of the night, pretending not to be sleepy, suppressing each rising yawn, and trying to make the lips smile and the eyes twinkle, and to look animated in spite of fatigue: and all this for no earthly purpose—too old to care about lovers, and without daughters to marry. Why should an ugly old maid of sixty-six take all these pains, or leave her own snug fireside, if she had not a touch of the popular complaint.

"Then your man of pleasure, risking his life at every corner in a cab, with a restive horse; wearing all his clothes painfully tight to show off his figure, confining his neck in a bandage, pouring liquids down his throat, though he knows they will give him a headache, sitting up all night shaking bits of bone together for the mere purpose of giving somebody a chance of winning all his money, or offering bets on racehorses to afford himself and family an opportunity of changing opulence for beggary! He has the popular complaint of course.

"Then your man of business: your public servant, toiling, and striving and figetting about matters of state, sacrificing health, and the snug comforts of a private gentleman, for the sake of popularity! His complaint is popular indeed. Then your physician, courting extensive practice, and ambitious of the honour of never having time to eat a comfortable meal, and proud of being called out of bed the moment he is composing himself to sleep! He must be raving. Then your barrister, fagging over dull books, and wearing a three-tailed wig, and talking for hours, that his client, right or wrong, may be successful! All these people appear to me to be awfully excited: the popular complaint is strong upon them, and I would put them all into the straightest waistcoats I could procure."

Patriotic Follies

"It is delightful to hear English men and women talk of their dear country. There is nothing like Old England, say they; yet paramount as their love of country appears to be, their love of French frippery is a stronger passion! They will lament the times, the stagnation of trade, the scarcity of money, the ruin of manufacturers, but they will wear Parisian productions. It is a comfort, however, to know that they are often deceived, and benefit their suffering countrymen without knowing it—as lace, silks, and gloves have frequently been exported from this country, and sold to English women on the coast of France as genuine French articles. How little does Mrs. Alderman Popkins dream, when she returns to her residence in Bloomsbury, that her Parisian pelisse is of Spitalfields manufacture, and that her French lace veil came originally from Honiton."

THE GATHERER

 
"A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles."
 

SHAKSPEARE.

BULL AND NO BULL

"I was going," said an Irishman, "over Westminster Bridge the other day, and I met Pat Hewins—'Hewins,' says I, 'how are you?'—'Pretty well,' says he, 'thank you, Donnelly.'—'Donnelly,' says I, 'that's not my name.'– 'Faith, no more is mine Hewins,' says he. So we looked at each other again, and sure it turned out to be neither of us—and where's the bull of that now?"

BAD HABIT

Sir Frederick Flood had a droll habit of which he could never effectually break himself (at least in Ireland.) Whenever a person at his back whispered or suggested any thing to him whilst he was speaking in public, without a moment's reflection, he always repeated the suggestion literatim. Sir Frederick was once making a long speech in the Irish Parliament, lauding the transcendent merits of the Wexford magistracy, on a motion for extending the criminal jurisdiction in that county, to keep down the disaffected. As he was closing a most turgid oration by declaring "that the said magistracy ought to receive some signal mark of the Lord Lieutenant's favour,"—John Egan, who was rather mellow, and sitting behind him, jocularly whispered, "and be whipped at the cart's tail."– "And be whipped at the cart's tail!" repeated Sir Frederick unconsciously, amidst peals of uncontrollable laughter.

CURIOUS POST OFFICE

It is said, as the Isle of Ascension is visited by the homeward-bound ships on account of its sea fowls, fish, turtle, and goats, there is in a crevice of the rock a place called the "Post Office," where letters are deposited, shut up in a well-corked bottle, for the ships that next visit the island. ²²

P.T.W.

AMERICAN COURTSHIP

The young ladies of Medina county, among other means of preventing the too frequent use of ardent spirits, have resolved that they will not receive the addresses of any young gentleman who is in the habit of using spirituous liquors. The young gentlemen in the same neighbourhood, by way of retaliation, have resolved that they will not seriously pay their addresses to any young lady who wears corsets. This is right. If whiskey has slain its thousands—corsets have slain their tens of thousands.—N.Y. American.

What colours were the winds and waves the last tempest at sea?

Answer.—The winds blew and the waves rose.

C.K.W.

LIGHT EVIL

A good natured citizen, on retiring from a large house of business, took a neat little country box at Laytonstone, and going with his wife to see it, she was very sulky and displeased; which "Gilpin" observing, said, "my dear Judy, don't you like the place?" "Like it indeed! no, why there isn't room to swing a cat in it." "Well, but my dear Judy, you know we never have any occasion to swing cats."

*** The signature C.C. to the Minstrel Ballad, in our last, merely implies the correspondent who sent it "for the MIRROR." The writer of the Ballad is Sir Walter Scott. It appears in the Notes to the New Edition of "Waverley," but was hitherto unpublished in Sir Walter's works.