London: Printed by JUDD & GLASS, Phenix Works, St. Andrew's Hill, Doctors' Commons, and Published (for the Proprietors) by THOMAS BAKER at 80, Fleet-street, E.C.-February 3, 1866. B Bes. B THE Spiritual Magazine lies-in morc senses than one-before us, and before committing it to its fitting place, the fire, we are desirous of making an indignant protest against it as a disgrace to our country and our literature. Spiritualism is simply a mischievous delusion, and its believers may be exhaustively classed under two heads-the knaves and the dupes. Of course the spiritualist will meet this statement with the reproachful query, "What! is the distinguished MR. SO-AND-SO a dupe?" To be sure he is, is our answer. Any one who has studied the chronicles of delusion and imposture knows that the successful swindles are generally remarkable for the fact that the knaves are shallow and ignorant, and the dupes intelligent even gifted. There has never been an imposture yet that did not deceive some eminent people, and there has seldom been an imposture that has not been originated by an uneducated sharper or self-deluded ignoramus. The fact that distinguished mathematicians, philosophers, and writers have been found to believe in persons like HOME and the DAVENPORTS, only adds one or two more to a long list of similar infatuations. It is on behalf of these misguided votaries and for the sake of names we respect, that we protest against the Spiritual Magazine. We are pained to see the name of WILLIAM HOWITT in the same pages with the scurrilities of MR. BENJAMIN COLEMAN. This person, enraged at the exposure of the spiritualist humbug by MR. SOTHERN, dedicates a large portion of this infamous publication to abuse of him. Rising above the dull level of his usual effusions about gyrating tables and twangling instruments, he soars to a depth of indeceny which we should have thought even the editor of a spiritual magazine would not have aimed at. He begins by saying that MR. SOTHERN's doings are so wonderful that he must be a medium malgré lui, and then says he never did anything at all wonderful:-that is spiritual logic. But then he goes beyond this. Every one has heard the saying, "so and so can't be true because it is in the papers," and every one knows that this is strictly true as regards the majority of American papers. To write for some Transatlantic journals a man must be, not to put too fine a point on it, a ruffian as well as an unveracious person. But MR. COLEMAN does not hesitate to quote from a New York paper with as much solemnity as if he were extracting from Scripture a statement which no respectable English journal would print, and he takes care to admit passages wholly irrelevant and entirely libellous-with what intent may be easily inferred, from a threat to "recur to the subject if MR. SOTHERN continues the controversy. There is only one word that can characterize such conduct, but as we would not appear to attack the editor of the S. M. with his own weapons we shall not put our readers to the pain of reading it. The rest of the magazine is made up of the usual drivel, as ungrammatical as it is ridiculous. We read of the usual table that throws summersaults, and of a lively four-poster-not to mention "a lump of clay which is placed on the table, bursts into a flame of fire, and VOL. II. EFORE you enter on a spec It's always well the cost to count up; One's every wish were pleasant, clearly; Twelve flunkeys your commands to wait on- French dinners served the finest plate on. That make you dread your Times to take up- A two-pair back your humble station- Contentment is than Fortune coyer. Depends the value of one's money. leaves a dense cloud of sulphurous odour"-in short, a Pharaoh's serpent. Then there is a MR. A. P., who is carried out of the room into the next, "passing up the ceiling through the cornice." Then we have a rhapsody about MISS HARDINGE, whose orations are no credit to the spirits supposed to inspire them. At the close of this article there is a bit of ignorance quite characteristic of the spiritualist. "We have been informed that MR. SCOTT, the editor of the Saturday Review, was the writer of the article." Where was the spirit of PAUL PRY, that he didn't tell MR. COLEMAN that the name of the editor of the Saturday is not SCOTT ? But it is like crushing a butterfly on a wheel-no, we beg the butterfly's pardon-it is like taking a NASMYTH's hammer to destroy a NORFOLK HOWARD, to criticise MR. COLEMAN and his magazine. We would simply ask those respectable people who are quoted as believers, whether they like to have their names connected with such a scurrile publication? THE FENIAN REBELLION. (BY TELL-IT-TO-THE-MARINES AND TRANS-SINISTRAL TELEGRAPH.) THE long-expected rising has taken place, and the Irish republic is every where triumphant. MR. DION BOUCICAULT has been proclaimed emperor. The regiments quartered at the Curragh were desirous of coming over to the popular party, but the proposal has been negatived in the Fenian Congress, on the ground that if they did there would be no fighting. Large bodies of Irish and American peasants are going about singing the national anthem, "The captain with the whiskers LATER INFORMATION. section of the rebels has beaten the other section out of Dublin, and There has been a serious disturbance here. The more peaceable violence which was used in ejecting the warlike section, and has come has now broken up into two parties. The one party deprecates the to blows with the other party in consequence. Peace is again restored. Ground and Lofty-Melodrama. Six brothers of tight-rope and trapeze celebrity are about to appear at a New York Theatre in a piece (called a melodrama), specially written for them, and the event, says the advertisement, will institute "a pure gymnastic literature." We suppose there will be a good deal of word-twisting in it, and would suggest it should be called a burlesque. The scheme opens a new field of dramatic writing, and will offer a fine opportunity for some of our farce writers whose feats on the English language are quite as wonderful if not as graceful as anything done on the rope or trapeze. PROSPEROUS. of the island. A monster, scarcely human." BY MR. DODGER SYKES. { A princely inspector, very BY MR. FARNELL. much bamboozled. An airy spirit, with wings BY OUR SWELL CONTRIof "grey goosequill." выток. SCENE.-A populous parish in the island. Deservedly confined into this ward, PROSPEROUS.— Thy skilley and toke, I'll rack thee with the crank, No, pray thee! PROSPEROUS.— [Exit. Enter ARIEL playing and singing. FARNELLINAND following him, much So slave, hence! bewildered. BI had better have gone back to the Catskill mountains, for nothing but discomfiture awaited him in Falling Waters. RIP had always been accustomed to submit silently to the domineering habits of MRS. RIP, as she was before he left her, but on his return, her marriage with DERRICK had so completely tamed her that he found much difficulty in assuming a sufficiently domineering attitude towards her. They were at first so humble and so submissive to each other that their household affairs became hopelessly confused. The following dialogue (overheard by MEENIE) will suffice to show how seriously this mutual humility interfered with their domestic arrangements: MRS. RIP.-My love, would you like me to order any dinner to-day? BIP.-That I'll leave entirely to you, my own. MRS. RIP. I could not think of being guilty of the indelicacy of having an opinion of my own, dear,-if I may be permitted to call you so! RIP.-Certainly, that is, subject to any objection you may have to my saying so. MRS. RIP.-Oh, you know I never entertain any objection to anything -unless, of course, it is your wish that I should. RIP.-Well, you know I've shvored-off wishing you to do anything, dear. MRS. RIP.-Then to return to our mutton, you do not wish me to order any dinner? RIP. I apologize. Perhaps I expressed myself too strongly when I said I did not wish you to do anything. I should have added "that is distasteful to you.' MRS. RIP.-Nothing is distasteful to me that you order me to do. RIP.-I order! Oh, gracious! You never knew me order you to do anything-I speak subject, of course, to correction. MRS. RIP.-Correction? Oh, RIP! [They fall into each other's arms. But an event occurred shortly after RIP's return which plunged them both into the depths of misery. It should be stated that MRS. RIP was RIP's second wife; his first wife was the daughter of a wandering nigger serenader. One day, about forty years before the termination of the play, the first Mus. RIP disappeared. No one ever heard of her again, and it was supposed that she had fallen accidentally into the river. RIP waited ten years for her, and as she did not turn up, he married the second MRS. RIP, who was originally a Mas. BILBut after RIP had met with his extraordinary adventure in the mountain, and had claimed the second MRS. RIP from DERRICK, to his intense astonishment the first MRS. RIP turned up and claimed him. She had also been into the Catskill mountains one day, and had also fallen asleep, but she had slept forty years instead of twenty. LINGTON. DERRICK, of course, lost no time in claiming the second Mus. RIP, and her property, as the only man who had really married her, but to his astonishment the original MRS. DERRICK turned up, and claimed him. She had also been asleep on the Catskill Mountains for forty years. The buxom second MRS. RIP (as we will still call her) thus became the best catch in the village, for the whole village belonged to her, and it was mot long before she was comfortably married to HENDRICH VEDDER, the smart young buccaneer, who made no bones about sending MRENIE about her business. MEENIE subsequently married MR. J. L. TOOLE (in another play), and the two are doing well. "UNLIMITED LIABILITY." THERE is a limit to the thin blue air Though earthly vision have no seeming bound; Yet thinnest vapour marks a surface there, Or thickening clouds-wracks close the scene around. The morning beam that flits on pinions rale, As though from space, and tints the neutral ground That gives it span, when Sol his visage round There is a limit to the unbridled sea, Though shifts the treach'rous sea-line o'er the deep Some wavelet slow; till it scarce seems to creep Chaos itself hath limit: Time hath end: Things strive towards their goal, nor reach it till Yet there's one thing whose impulse nought can mend; My path along its course, and feel quite ill, BOS LOCUTUS. READERS of early Roman history will remember with what solemnity the chronicler speaks of the occasions when the speaking of an ox presaged some dire event about to happen to the republic. Let us hope no such omen of a national disaster is to be found in the following announcement: NOTICE. A MEETING of the MILK PRODUCERS, in and around the City of Bristol, will be holden in the Large Room at the BUNCH OF GRAPES, NICHOLAS STREET, on THURSDAY (THIS DAY), Jan. 25th, at Three o'clock in the afternoon, when and where all who are interested are particularly requested to attend. We have despatched a special commissioner to Bristol to learn what the cows had to say, and what resolutions were arrived at. We hear that a deputation was sent from London, consisting of several respectable pumps and a large and influential body of chalk, but cannot vouch for the truth of the report. Further information in our next. A NIGHT IN A WORKHOUSE. REPORTED BY OUR OWN CASUAL POOR. NEVER shall I forget the horrors of that awful night! It wasn't the actors-leastways, not all of them-that was noisy; but to hear the literary gents a-asking them for orders, would have sent a shudder through even a Lambeth guardian's frame. The one alluded to by the name of CHARLEY FECHTER was a little bounceable and bumptious, and kep' a-talking of one A'BECKETT in what your casual can only denominate as murderous tones.. "Ha, ha!" he says, "I shall teach thee to be critic, young man presumptuous-ah, ah! SIR A'BECKETT, this to decide-ah, ah! Oh, BLAWNCH!" a Well, there might have been a disturbance, MR. A'BECKETT himself being present, and a very pleasing and fair-spoken personage and lovely to behold, when an actor came in with an eye-or two-like hawk's, with the most marvellous eye-or two-you ever saw; and says he, quite quiet-like, with none of your French twopenny bluster, "Well, here is your good health, and your family's good health; may they live long, and prosper!" To which an elderly comedian by the name of ROMER, he says, "Humph; your wishes are-ah-Utopian, and-ah-centrifugal! Quite inferior to-ah-I should say-ah-a torrid two!" Most of them were silent for a time after coming in, but there was what is called burlesque authors and critics amongst them, who made much more noise than the actors. And there were two especially who came in, waltzing into the shed, waving their hands, and singing in an affected voice as they sidled along, "We would we were a swell; but we're only BEST and BELL:-" When they were interrupted by the voice of MR. HORACE WIGAN, saying, "Pickles!" By degrees the night grew ghastly cold, and sendimaylive if I ever heard such a weak-spirited set for the endurance of hardship. There was one person as they called The Phantom, as was downright boister ous. [But she meant she was very hungry. Remove me "Carry me out," he says, "into the moonbames! from the horrors of this Auditorium." "There's nothing in it!" answers, languidly, a young fellow of eighty or so, who had been dancing about in his rug like a Sylph, and answered to the name of MATTHEWS when spoken fair, and he chaunts, "For it's nothing but a history, of squalor and of mystery, If told in full consistory, or very little more; So I sang the song of HELEN, and the fall of BEST and BELLIN-" "Bother B. and B." shouts old HOMNIUM; and then, sendimaylive, if he didn't offer to read a letter to the Times. Here, reason reeled; faith failed; confidence collapsed; hope hooked it! Without another struggle I submitted to the horrors of that awful night. But I have a few horrors for MR. FARNALL's private ear, if he would like to have them. They are very horrid indeed, for they include an imitation of MR. G. VINING! [EDITORIAL NOTE.-We do not believe one word of the foregoing statement.] Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. THE Times correspondent at Madrid must be an Irishman, or a frequenter of Spanish bull-fights, for in his description of the birth of an Infante, he has the following extraordinary passage:-after stating that "at ten minutes past eleven o'clock a healthy and robust infant came into the world," he says gravely, "the royal children now living We have heard of a baker's dozen, and know that a dozen in the pubare five in number; the newborn infant completes the half-dozen." lishing trade means thirteen. Does a Spanish dozen consist only of ten? LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. SHORTLY will appear, by the author of Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Half-bound, to be followed by Prometheus in Cloth with gilt edges. |