SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE HUSBAND'S COMPLAINT.

GAY.

London Mag.

THE EDITOR'S ROOM.

July 28, 1828.

And so, most tasteful and provident public, you are going out of town on Saturday next?—We envy you. Mars is gone, and Sontag is gone, and Pasta is going—and Velluti is out of voice—and they are playing tragedies at the Haymarket—and Vauxhall will never be dry again—and the Funny Club are drenched to their skins every day—and "the sweet shady side of Pall Mall" is a forgotten blessing. You will be dull in the country if this weather continue—but not so dirty as upon the Macadam. So go.

We shall stay behind, with the Duke of Wellington, to look after business. It would not do for either of us to be gadding, while Ireland, and Turkey, and Portugal want watching. The times are getting ticklish. The stocks are rising most dreadfully, as the barometer falls; and the Squirearchy are beginning to dread that the patridges will be drowned. That will be a sad drawback from the delights of a two-shilling quartern-loaf. For ourselves, we have plenty of work cut out for us, in this our abiding place. The fewer the books which are published, the more we shall have to draw upon our own genius; and the duller the season, the more vivacious must we be to put our readers in spirits. But we have consolation approaching in the shape of amusing work. Immediately that parliament is up, the newspapers will begin to lie, "like thunder," Tom Pipes would say. What mysterious murders, what heart-rending accidents, what showers of bonnets in the Paddington Canal, what legions of unhappy children dropped at honest men's doors! We have got a file of the "Morning Herald" for the last ten years;—and we give the worthy labourers in the accident line, fair notice, that if they hash up the old stories with the self-same sauce, as they are wont to do, without substituting the pistol for the razor, and not even changing the Christian name of the young ladies who always drown themselves when parliament is up, we shall take the matter into our own hands, and write a "Chapter of Accidents" that will drive these poor pretenders to the secrets of hemp and rats-bane fairly out of the field.—Ibid.

AWKWARDNESS.

Man is naturally the most awkward animal that inhales the breath of life. There is nothing, however simple, which he can perform with the smallest approach to gracefulness or ease. If he walks,—he hobbles, or jumps, or limps, or trots, or sidles, or creeps—but creeping, sidling, limping, hobbling, and jumping, are by no means walking. If he sits,—he fidgets, twists his legs under his chair, throws his arm over the back of it, and puts himself into a perspiration, by trying to be at ease. It is the same in the more complicated operations of life. Behold that individual on a horse! See with what persevering alacrity he hobbles up and down from the croupe to the pommel, while his horse goes quietly at an amble of from four to five miles in the hour. See how his knees, flying like a weaver's shuttle, from one extremity of the saddle to another, destroy, in a pleasure-ride from Edinburgh to Roslin, the good, gray kerseymeres, which were glittering a day or two ago in Scaife and Willis's shop. The horse begins to gallop—Bless our soul! the gentleman will decidedly roll off. The reins were never intended to be pulled like a peal of Bob Majors; your head, my friend ought to be on your own shoulders, and not poking out between your charger's ears; and your horse ought to use its exertions to move on, and not you. It is a very cold day, you have cantered your two miles, and now you are wiping your brows, as if you had run the distance in half the time on foot.

People think it a mighty easy thing to roll along in a carriage. Step into this noddy. That creature in the corner is evidently in a state of such nervous excitement that his body is as immovable as if he had breakfasted on the kitchen poker; every jolt of the vehicle must give him a shake like a battering-ram; do you call this coming in to give yourself a rest? Poor man, your ribs will ache for this for a month to come! But the other gentleman opposite: see how flexible he has rendered his body. Every time my venerable friend on the coach-box extends his twig with a few yards of twine at the end of it, which he denominates "a whupp," the suddenness of the accelerated motion makes his great, round head flop from the centre of his short, thick neck, and come with such violence on the unstuffed back, that his hat is sent down upon the bridge of his nose with a vehemence which might well nigh carry it away. Do you say that man is capable of taking a pleasure ride? Before he has been bumped three miles, every pull of wind will be jerked out of his body, and by the time he has arrived at Roslin, he will be a dead man. If that man prospers in the world, he commits suicide the moment he sets up his carriage.

We go to a ball. Mercy upon us! is this what you call dancing? A man of thirty years of age, and with legs as thick as a gate-post, stands up in the middle of the room, and gapes, and fumbles with his gloves, looking all the time as if he were burying his grandmother. At a given signal, the unwieldy animal puts himself in motion; he throws out his arms, crouches up his shoulders, and, without moving a muscle of his face, kicks out his legs, to the manifest risk of the bystanders, and goes back to the place puffing and blowing like an otter, after a half-hour's burst. Is this dancing? Shades of the filial and paternal Vestris! can this be a specimen of the art which gives elasticity to the most inert confirmation, which sets the blood glowing with a warm and genial flow, and makes beauty float before our ravished senses, stealing our admiration by the gracefulness of each new motion, till at last our souls thrill to each warning movement, and dissolve into ecstasy and love?

People seem even to labour to be awkward. One would think a gentleman might shake hands with a familiar friend without any symptoms of cubbishness. Not at all. The hand is jerked out by the one with the velocity of a rocket, and comes so unexpectedly to the length of its tether, that it nearly dislocates the shoulder bone. There it stands swaying and clutching at the wind, at the full extent of the arm, while the other is half poked out, and half drawn in, as if rheumatism detained the upper moiety and only below the elbow were at liberty to move. After you have shaken the hand, (but for what reason you squeeze it, as if it were a sponge, I can by no means imagine,) can you not withdraw it to your side, and keep it in the station where nature and comfort alike tell you it ought to be? Do you think your breeches' pocket the most proper place to push your daddle into? Do you put it there to guard the solitary half-crown from the rapacity of your friend; or do you put it across your breast in case of an unexpected winder from your apparently peaceable acquaintance on the opposite side?

Is it not quite absurd that a man can't even take a glass of wine without an appearance of infinite difficulty and pain? Eating an egg at breakfast, we allow, is a difficult operation, but surely a glass of wine after dinner should be as easy as it is undoubtedly agreeable. The egg lies under many disadvantages. If you leave the egg-cup on the table, you have to steady it with the one hand, and carry the floating nutriment a distance of about two feet with the other, and always in a confoundedly small spoon, and sometimes with rather unsteady fingers. To avoid this, you take the egg-cup in your hand, and every spoonful have to lay it down again, in order to help yourself to bread; so, upon the whole, we disapprove of eggs, unless, indeed, you take them in our old mode at Oxford; that is two eggs mashed up with every cup of tea, and purified with a glass of hot rum.

But the glass of wine—can anything be more easy? One would think not—but if you take notice next time you empty a gallon with a friend, you will see that, sixteen to one, he makes the most convulsive efforts to do with ease what a person would naturally suppose was the easiest thing in the world. Do you see, in the first place, how hard he grasps the decanter, leaving the misty marks of five hot fingers on the glittering crystal, which ought to be pure as Cornelia's fame? Then remark at what an acute angle he holds his right elbow as if he were meditating an assault on his neighbour's ribs; then see how he claps the bottle down again as if his object were to shake the pure ichor, and make it muddy as his own brains. Mark how the animal seizes his glass,—by heavens he will break it into a thousand fragments! See how he bows his lubberly head to meet half way the glorious cargo; how he slobbers the beverage over his unmeaning gullet, and chucks down the glass so as almost to break its stem after he has emptied it of its contents as if they had been jalap or castor-oil! Call you that taking a glass of wine? Sir, it is putting wine into your gullet as you would put small beer into a barrel,—but it is not—oh, no! it is not taking, so as to enjoy, a glass of red, rich port, or glowing, warm, tinted, beautiful caveza!

A newly married couple are invited to a wedding dinner. Though the lady, perhaps, has run off with a person below her in rank and station, see when they enter the room, how differently they behave.—How gracefully she waves her head in the fine recover from the withdrawing curtsy, and beautifully extends her hand to the bald-pated individual grinning to her on the rug! While the poor spoon, her husband, looks on, with the white of his eyes turned up as if he were sea-sick, and his hands dangle dangle on his thighs as if he were trying to lift his own legs. See how he ducks to the lady of the house, and simpers across the fire-place to his wife, who, by this time is giving a most spirited account of the state of the roads, and the civility of the postilions near the Borders.

Is a man little? Let him always, if possible, stoop. We are sometimes tempted to lay sprawling in the mud fellows of from five feet to five feet eight, who carry the back of their heads on the extreme summit of their back-bone, and gape up to heaven as if they scorned the very ground. Let no little man wear iron heels. When we visit a friend of ours in Queen-street we are disturbed from our labours or conversation by a sound which resembles the well-timed marching of a file of infantry or a troop of dismounted dragoons. We hobble as fast as possible to the window, and are sure to see some chappie of about five feet high stumping on the pavement with his most properly named cuddy-heels; and we stake our credit, we never yet heard a similar clatter from any of his majesty's subjects of a rational and gentlemanly height—We mean from five feet eleven (our own height) up to six feet three.

Is a man tall? Let him never wear a surtout. It is the most unnatural, and therefore the most awkward dress that ever was invented. On a tall man, if he be thin, it appears like a cossack-trouser on a stick leg; if it be buttoned, it makes his leanness and lankness still more appalling and absurd; if it be open, it appears to be no part of his costume, and leads us to suppose that some elongated habit-maker is giving us a specimen of that rare bird, the flying tailor.

We go on a visit to the country for a few days, and the neighbourhood is famous for its beautiful prospects. Though, for our own individual share, we would rather go to the catacombs alone, than to a splendid view in a troop, we hate to balk young people! and as even now a walking-stick chair is generally carried along for our behoof, we seldom or ever remain at home when all the rest of the party trudge off to some "bushy bourne or mossy dell." On these occasions how infinitely superior the female is to the male part of the species! The ladies, in a quarter of an hour after the proposal of the ploy, appear all in readiness to start, each with her walking-shoes and parasol, with a smart reticule dangling from her wrist. The gentlemen, on the other hand, get off with their great, heavy Wellingtons, which, after walking half a mile, pinch them at the toe, and make the pleasure excursion confine them to the house for weeks. Then some fool, the first gate or stile we come to, is sure to show off his vaulting, and upsets himself in the ditch on the opposite side, instead of going quietly over and helping the damosels across. And then, if he does attempt the polite, how awkwardly the monster makes the attempt! We come to a narrow ditch with a plank across it—He goes only half way, and standing in the middle of the plank, stretches out his hand and pulls the unsuspecting maiden so forcibly, that before he has time to get out of the way, the impetus his own tug has produced, precipitates them both among the hemlock and nettles, which, you may lay it down as a general rule, are to be found at the thoroughfares in every field.

We hold that every man behaves with awkwardness when he is in love, and the want of the one is a presumption of the absence of the other. When people are fairly engaged, there is perhaps less of this directly to the object, but there is still as much of it in her presence; but it is wonderful how soon the most nervous become easy when marriage has concluded all their hopes. Delicate girl! just budding into womanly loveliness, whose heart, for the last ten minutes, has been trembling behind the snowy wall of thy fair and beautiful bosom, hast thou never remarked and laughed at a tall and much-be-whiskered young man for the mauvaise honte with which he hands to thee thy cup of half-watered souchong? Laugh not at him again, for he will assuredly be thy husband.

Love, when successful is well enough, and perhaps it has treasures of its own to compensate for its inconveniences; but a more miserable situation than that of an unhappy individual before the altar, it is not in the heart of man to conceive. First of all, you are marched with a solitary male companion up the long aisle, which on this occasion appears absolutely interminable; then you meet your future partner dressed out in satin and white ribbons, whom you are sure to meet in gingham gowns or calico prints, every morning of your life ever after. There she is, supported by her old father, decked out in his old-fashioned brown coat, with a wig of the same colour, beautifully relieving the burning redness of his huge projecting ears; and the mother, puffed up like an overgrown bolster, encouraging the trembling girl, and joining her maiden aunts of full fifty years, in telling her to take courage, for it is what they must all come to. Bride's-maids and mutual friends make up the company; and there, standing out before this assemblage, you assent to everything the curate, or, if you are rich enough, the rector, or even the dean, may say, shewing your knock-knees in the naked deformity of white kerseymeres, to an admiring bevy of the servants of both families, laughing and tittering from the squire's pew in the gallery. Then the parting!—The mother's injunctions to the juvenile bride to guard herself from the cold, and to write within the week. The maiden aunts' inquiries, of, "My dear, have you forgot nothing?"—the shaking of hands, the wiping and winking of eyes! By Hercules!—there is but one situation more unpleasant in this world, and that is, bidding adieu to your friends, the ordinary and jailor, preparatory to swinging from the end of a halter out of it. The lady all this time seems not half so awkward. She has her gown to keep from creasing, her vinaigrette to play with; besides, that all her nervousness is interesting and feminine, and is laid to the score of delicacy and reserve.

Blackwood's Magazine.