"SIR, FOREIGN LYRICS OF LOW LIFE. "BEING at an evening party lately, and having sustained a severe infliction of young-lady singing, a thought came into my head. I said to myself, These British Ladies have been for the last two hours chanting about the supposed characters, feelings and habits of continental parties of the inferior class. We have heard The Muleteer. The Gondolier, Il Pescatore, Le Postillon, The Boatman of the Dardanelles, The Sledge-Driver, The Tauridor, and a heap of other sentimental portraitures of people who, if they were not foreigners, we should never think of singing songs about. I wonder whether foreign ladies and gentlemen pay our humble classes the same compliments, and do So with the accuracy of detail with which our Lyric Bards describe the folks our vocalists are so fond of ?' And, Sir, prosecuting the subject, I learned, on inquiry at foreign music-shops, that the same class of subject is as popular abroad as at home. I have obtained a mass of songs much chanted in Paris, Madrid, and St. Petersburgh, in which our cabmen, policemen, engine-drivers, beadles, watermen, and others, receive the same elegant and accurate treatment for the continental saloons, as the corresponding classes on the continent receive here. In the hope of promoting good feeling among the nations by illustrating this reciprocity, I have translated three or four of these Foreign Lyrics, and I place them at your service. "I am, Sir, yours very truly, The Cab-Briber. A merry Cab-driver am I, And a merry Cab-driver am And the Mayoresses, winking, Invite me to drinking,, "PINDAR SMITHI." When they hear me cry, joyously, "Hi!" The Brayman. The Drayman is sturdy, the Drayman is stout, The Lighterman. Light is the Lighterman's toil, As his delicate vessel he rows, And where Battersea's blue billows boil, To his port at fair Wapping he goes; Yet deem not the Lighterman's heart is as light As the shallop he steers o'er the Severn so bright. For Love he has kindled his torch, And lighted the Lighterman's heart, And he owns to the rapturous scorch, And he owns to the exquisite smart; And Thames Tunnel echoes the Lighterman's sigh As he glides 'mid the islands of soft Eelpie. The Beef-Eater. Why so sad, thou bold Beef-Eater, Why dost wander through Hyde Parks, Comes she not who bade thee meet her On her ride from Bevis Marks. Has the Mayor, her haughty guardian, Vowed her to some Beadle dark, Or some fierce and wild Churchwarden, Proud of lineage from the Ark? IN the Memoirs of Bishop Hurd, recently published, we meet with the following prophecy. It is rarely that prophecies are so strictly fulfilled, and this rarity is the cause of our alluding to this particular one. DR. CUMMING must gnaw his fingers with envy : "Shortly after his arrival at Hartlebury, she said to him one day, 'How do you think your pupil, his ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES will turn out?'-"My dear Cousin,' the Bishop replied, laying his peculiarly small white hand (en paren thèse, is it not a great peculiarity with Bishops that they mostly all have peculiarly small white hands?) upon her arm, I can hardly tell; either the most polished gentleman, or the most accomplished blackguard in Europe,-possibly an admixture of both.'" And we all know how the Bishop's pupil, his Blessed Majesty GEORGE THE FOURTH, did turn out. The prophecy was a pretty safe one, it was sure to be true on one side or the other, and the result proved it. Was he not universally acknowledged to be the most polished gentleman in Europe? polished, as a boot is with blackingfor his memory has received nothing else. It is true that Europe has since reversed its own verdict, and rather leans now to the opinion that, instead of being the most accomplished gentleman, the Prince was rather the reverse. Thus, BISHOP HURD was doubly right with his double-barrelled prophecy-the Prince was "possibly an admixture of both"-a kind of "Prince's Mixture," that contained a very large proportion of "Blackguard." It is not often that Bishops can see so far; but then BISHOP HURD had such a brilliant pupil! Domestic. "WELL, MA'AM, IF YOU ARST ME, I B'LIEVE THE REEL REASON WERE, THAT MISSUS THOUGHT I WERE TOO GOOD LOOKING!" AGAIN the hills of Italy Echo the din of war, Again the eagles gather To Rome, from near and far, Again the seven-hilled city, The conqueror's guerdon stands, But not, as erst, with conquest's sword Held in Barbarian hands! When Rome, an infant giant, First crowned her seven-fold height, The stalwart North its swarms poured forth To crush the rising might. There strode the swarthy Cymry, The red Gaul at his side, And tower and town went helpless down, But Heaven's high purpose needed Lying by Lightning. BRENNUS AT THE SCALES. How changed the men, how changed the parts! | Strange, how despite the ill-matched freight The scene alone the same. For patriot hands, see hireling bands, Still holdeth well the parallel- On what is done doth still look on, THE Telegram which said that LOUIS NAPOLEON had been shot at, said the thing which was not. Really telegraphic announcements are often so romantic, the electric wires do tell such stories, that any astounding message transmitted by them will soon come to be called an electric Tell-a-cram. The scales uncertain play, While still as death, with bated breath, We watch them as they sway. And well we know-be 't weal or woe The scale where BRENNUS flings his sword Will be the scale to rise! Were this a man our wit could scan, Small doubt were there which scale would bear Long since the sword were flung! Rather Too Much. IT is too bad of Members to do the talking in Parliament, and out of Parliament too. If they hold forth to the extent they do when the House is open, they might have the decency to hold their tongues during the recess. Not a single M.P. seems to possess what TALLEYRAND called un grand talent pour la silence. blaze away by accident while you are taking aim, and so almost get "The PRINCE CONSORT, attended by the Gentlemen-in-Waiting, drove to the Abergeldie woods, which were driven for deer." "The driving of the Prince, and the driving of the woods, are things which I am competent, I think, to comprehend. The only part which puzzles me in this perplexing paragraph is the yearly introduction of the Gentlemen-in-Waiting. For the life of me I can't conceive, Sir, why the Gentlemen-in-Waiting are lugged into the account. As I read it, the statement bears no sort of reference to any courtly ceremony, in which the presence of the Gentlemen-in-Waiting is needful. When perusing it, I picture the Prince Consort as a sportsman not a court's-man; and what have deerstalkers to do with Gentlemen-inWaiting? is the question which quite naturally rises to my mind. Do Gentlemen-in-Waiting attend His Royal Highness for the purpose of officiating in the place of gamekeepers? Do they carry the Royal powderflask, and load the Royal rifle, and instruct the Royal sportsman where he ought to stand, and when he ought to fire, and what he ought to do supposing he should miss? Or do the Gentlemen-in-Waiting perform the part of waiters (as their name seems to imply), and scamper about at lunch-time with napkins on their arms, handing the Royal sandwich, to subdue the Royal appetite, or the Royal pocket-pistol to wet the Royal whistle? To an inquiring mind like mine, and one loyally inquisitive about the Royal movements, a hundred other questions instantly suggest themselves, of fully equal interest with those which I have named. But I confine myself to asking-Do you think, Sir, as a deerstalker, that the Prince gets better sport by going out attended by these Gentlemen-in-Waiting? And do you think, Sir, as a subject, that your loyalty is heightened by having mention of such escort yearly dinned into your ears? "One of the charms of shooting, at least so far as I, a Cockney, understand it, is the freedom it affords from the forms of courts and cities, and the solacing relief of the hour or two of solitude which in places like the Highlands it is certain to secure. Whether his Royal Highness appreciates this pleasure, it is not for me to ask; but I am certain if he does he cannot possibly get much of it, seeing that he never can enjoy a day out deer-shooting without a pack of Gentlemenin-Waiting at his heels. "Believe me, Mr. Punch, with the sincerest loyalty to the Prince and to yourself, "A thoroughly Good Subject, though I may be "Cato Cottage, Peckham. "PRAY Mr. Punch, are you not fond of deer-stalking? I can't say am myself; but that's the fault of my physique, and is not to be regarded as a mental blemish. People generally like best the sports which they excel in; and nature, when she gave me a protuberance of person, with a couple of short legs, and-I must add-wind to match, very clearly did not intend me for a deer-stalker. My long-limbed friends assure me that the sport is splendid fun, and are so good as to invite me to their lodges to partake of it; but I don't quite see the 'fun' of scrambling over boulders; of panting up a mountain merely to pant down again; of scampering over plains, and shambling over stones, and floundering about in heather some three or four feet high (which may be easy work, no doubt, to persons with long legs, but is terribly hard labour to people who have stumpy ones); of sliding down a precipice, or wading up a waterfall, or crawling along a stream as flat as you can stoop, with your waistcoat in the water and your very whiskers wet with it; of sitting in damp clothes upon rocks as hard as adamant, and crouching behind corners until you get the cramp, and waiting hours and hours for the chances of a shot, with the odds at ninety-nine to one that you won't get it, and if you do the odds are HOW TO TRIP IT.-The PRINCE OF WALES promises to be as great that your priming has got wet and that your rifle will miss fire, or that a traveller as he is an accomplished dancer. His next intention is to you'll feel so nervous when the creature comes in sight that you'll go through all the Steppes of Russia. |