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Leader (1850-1860), 19th November 1853, Edition Country of 2, Page 20, WHITEBAIT AT GBEENWICH. If gentlemen wil...

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      1124 The Leader. [Sattjrbay ,

      1124 THE LEADER . [ SATtjRbAY ,

      ©..&&¥«Sb A A®* " There Is A Cabbage In ...

      © .. && ¥ « SB a a ®* " There is a cabbage in my garden , " said Isaac , " which grew from a seed that escaped a . bird ' s bill one day last autumn , as it pecked the parent stock . In the winter .- it lay covered with snow . Frost nipped it 3 bed tightly about it , and half-pinched out its life . Yet it lived and grew , a fibry tree , at first , in the soil , then a pin-point of green on the surface ; a slenderling anon , that drooped its head for faintness , when the meridian sun shot at it , that scarcely sustained the gently falling dews , and bended to breaking when the rain came . Then a sturdy plant , a tmiped of growth and substance , whose heart widened with its days . Its roots , which now stretch eight inches into the soil , are preyed upon by worms ; greedy insects cuddle among its leaves ; and its heart is fed upon by millions of minute existences . John , the gardener , will get ninepence for it on Saturday at the market !"

      " Whatever are you thinking about , my boy ? " said I , smiling at his history of a cabbage . " I have been considering , " he answered , " what and where was I , when my father and mother exchanged glances for the first time at Mrs . —— ' s party , on the evening-of the 7 th January , 1827 : and , do you know , I cannot form any satisfactory hypothesis on the subject . "Not but that I have invented a dozen . I embodied my favourite one in a couple of stanzas last night . Will you hear them ?" " With pleasure , " said I , " and see that you do them justice in the reading . " " Well , here they are ; I have called them—A THOUGHT . I . I ' m a soul as old as the world , I breathed in the dawn of eternal day ; I ' ve played with stars in the depths of space , And run them many a merry race , Where heaven ' s dust flies , o'er the milky way . I was free—I was free . - . II . I ' m a soul in a prison of clay , Laden with fetters of flesh and bone ; From morn to night and from night to mom , Every minute my burden is borne . I fret my chains , and wrestle , and moan , To be free— -to be free . " " . Bravo ! " cried I , when he had finished reading . " I like the idea ; it is at least more poetical" than believing that , on the night alluded to , you lay indigested in your papa ' s stomach ! As for the prisons of clay , they are model prisons , my boy , fitted up on beneficent principles , and not to be sneered at . But , by Jove , I like the idea !" " Now , Dick , " said my friend , rather seriously , " stop jesting , like a good fellow , and let us talk over this subject . " " With all my heart . " So we talked about Babies for a long time ; and here is the outcome of our conversation .

      When Baby first enters the world , we roll the pulpy organism in flannel and niche it in a nice cosy cradle to rest . The puling weak creature , insensible to joy or grief , was ushered into life with a pang , and a scream ; and here it now lies oppressed by a long and painful stupor—a nightmare prefacing live dream of a life . Turn aside its covering and look on it , —it has all the physical attributes of the biped , though not in all their grace and symmetry . It neither sees with its eyes , hears with its ears , nor discerns with its olfactories and tangentials as we do ; and yet the development of ibis flannel-bound brat may one day meet us—a philosopher , —a sceptic , —a puritan , —a what-not !—perhaps in society say an impudent thing to us , —put us down , show us up ! ( lod is great , — -but is not this amusing ? This rudiment of a , philosopher might enter throe times into a draper ' s yard stick !—an . incautious pillow would take hut a few seconds to dismiss its soul to IIados ! --yet will it live to ask itself whether it has a soul—to struggle fiercely to comprehend itself ; which it will no more be able to do than to take its head in its teeth—the poor little innocent wretch ! Shall we try and comprehend itP—alas , it is but another self , and we shall not succeed . Let us be content to be ignorant where knowledge is impossible ; enough for us , that whencesoever it has ( tome , it is here now , tiny , helpless , little soul , —nabbed at last and fixed hero in God ' s penal settlement , over which evangelical parsondmn , and other self-elected spiritual tormentors , experimentally preside ! There it lies , the unconscious raw material of a man—as yet , an unadulterated specimen of humanity . Whore out of tho cradle can we find such F What relation , pray , is there between the sand on the bench and the mirrors in which we admin ? ourselves H—between a ship ' s cable and superfine note-paper P —between m , spider ' s entrails and si lady ' s silk gown F—between the baby of the cradle and the bosom , and the man or woman of

      Jf the powers or the mind are there , as so ' iuo philosophers assure us , encased in tho strength and experience of a . fore existence , —if Memory , and . ' Perception , and . . Reflection , and Imagination , and Wit , and all the allied powers in the grand and eternal constitution of tho houI are there , and if they bring with them their foreign airs and prejudices , how do they behave when on tho Avails of their organic prison , life first dawns , and tin ; opening eyes _ telegraph to the Council in the brain ' s assembly rooms , the first impressions from the new world F 'Lot uh follow our fancy . And first : the S ' cnnks like fools peer from their posts out on tho strange world across whone threshold they have entered ; the alphabet of tliingH \ h new to them , they want a . key to the symbolism of tho universe . At each new impress from 1 ho outer sphere , they ' behave like the people of a city besieged , who fly to the rampnrts and Avails , wondering and wisting wlum any new or unheard-of engine is rol led up to the attack . Riojrr , come from a world of dueling brilliancy , in vain adapts hia spying apparatus to study

      form . He washes his eyeballs , adjusts his humours , and strives to bring things to a focus . At last a mother ' s face is painted on the brain . "Wit finds no contrast to lead to laughter ; Imagination , never iii its infinitude of . creations conjured up such' a shape ; Memory talks anxiousl y aside with his elder sister Recollection ; while Wond & r , returned from looking out through the . eyes , throws his first summersault in the centre of the group ! And now the face smiles in holy calmness , while this rino- of observers AA atch it on the brain , Mysterious sympathy !—the pulse quickens , —the nerves vibrate responsive to the feeling at the heart ;—a smile steals over the face of the Babe , —a placid rippling smile , the silent signal of the slowly dawning consciousness within . Touch diffuses itself through the frame ; he stations watchers on the fingers and palms , but shrinks from his first encounter with coarse materiality . He has conie from the world of abstract , forms , a perfect geometrician , but fails to recog - nize either the parallelipipedon on the rotund . Hearing for millions of ages had listened to the music of the spheres . His fine taste is sickened with disgust . He sits in the ears all day , sat and regretful , Avhile eveiy point in space centres a wave that-surg . es m low mirrmurs into his retreat . He will presentl y lay aside his fastidiousness : the grinding of a street-organ will yet put him into raptures . Taste , at first warning of the approach of earth , stations himselt as keeper at the gates , to test all imports . Thoughtless fellow . ' —who used to drink nectar with the Gods ,

      and enjoy the choicest fruits from the internal Irees . The nurse ' s spoon with the eA erlasting oil of castor is presented to him . Poor sense , he spits and sickens with disgust , —the extremest portions of the organism tingle in sympathy with his suffering—Smell : ——" Enough , " cries one , impatient of these newcomers from a world of spirits , " enough of these tyros in the school of experience . Your philosophy is absurd ; perception is but educated sensation ; and sensation is but— " you hesitate , our dear sir ! The philosophy which guided our fancy is absurd ; granted , but your philosophy may be offensive as well as absurd . We cannot know how we are brought into our mysterious intimacy with space and time , and form . We are aware of that . Speculation is the child of impotence . Let us see the child of your weakness . To please you , then , we Avill reverse the picture , and regard Baby as the result of / numberless differentiations of cells and tissues , whose last differentiations brought it into the open air , and into swaddling bands , and who has yet to be differentiated into thinking and daring manhood , and thence into oblivious abysses beyond the grave ; into grasses , and thence into beef and mutton , at unpopidar prices per pound ; into wind in an alderman ' s stomach , and into blood in his coarse and bulgy veins ; till once again it reappears , from , its weary round of differentiations , a prattler on a mother ' s breast , or a loved rogue , pulling its papa ' s whiskers ? We think no longer now of Baby as possessing mind , but as having certain undeveloped electricities in its branular department . Poor Baby ! if this he what thou art ! if from such avc are I We are fain to wish thee dead , and ourselves dead . Better , iudeed , incorporated in the all extended electric ocean , to speed a jobber ' s lie along the wires , than to be a lie ourselves ! Dick Futeeel .

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      Whitebait At Gbeenwich. If Gentlemen Wil...

      WHITEBAIT AT GBEENWICH . If gentlemen will take ladies to Bichmond and Greenwich wifcli views of gallantry flanked by whitebait ( I never do !) they must be " prepared For the consequences . " By the way , what is the 6 ul ) tie link connecting gastronomy with matrimony ( right and left-handed ) , —gulosity with what the French call " overflowings of the heart ? " There is such a link . Not only do I observe young gentlemen of the Lovelace species to he very partial to whitebait dinners , hut I noi ; e sis an invariable fact , a law of conjugal life , that the happiest couples are always fond of the cuisine ; correct views on the constitution of a dinner engender deeper and more lasting affections than the strictest sympathy in orthodoxy , or tho most thorough participation " in views for the elevation of the species . " JUroo I , being a logician , infer a causal connexion between happiness in tho married state , and harmony in gastronomic , desires . Argal I , being one to whom Logic is a guide , philosopher , and friend , not feeling myself capable of gastronomic excellence , have never married . Shakspearo , who knew everything , calls Love , with sad irony , — " A madnosH most discreet , A choking gal ] , and a pve & cvvhuj . tweet . " thereby profoundly , though obscurely , intimating the connexion between love and jam-pots , which our proverbial phrase , " cupboard love" has consecrated . Whitebait dinners are p leasant things , if you don't eat the whitebait , and don't pay the bill . Tho bill is a decided drawback ; ho is tho waiter sometimes ; ho was ho pre-eminently on tho occasion of Mr . and Mrs . Buzzard's clandestine dinner at the Crown and ( Sceptre , as set forth in . Maddison Morton ' s " screaming" farce at the Adelphi , adapted' from tin Crarpon do chcz Wry . The . Buzzards have married in secret , and are dining in secret , their , Utc-a-tctc much and frequently disturbed by _ tho incessant ; apparitions of the waiter . This waiter , on tho opening <>' the piece , has quitted the Crown and Sooptro , and comes to fill tho ph » ' «' of " boy" at Buzzard ' s establishment . Buzzard , recognising him . imagines that ho " knows all . " He knows nothing , but that is as good ns all , and ho , ho myafceriouHly" assents , tyrannizing over Buzzard in » l manner " easier aaon ^ than dencribed , " Go arul nee Jvceley do it It is one of the drollest farces you can hoc ; the dialogue is droll , from its oddity , tho situations are dim )] from Itoeloy ' 8 fat fun , and from tho wild disregard of probability which , the author laughingly passes ovoiv On the first night then ? was too great a tendency to ride jokes and situations to death by repetition , but when pruned of theso " daumablo iterations ; tho farco will be a great succoai ? .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 19, 1853, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19111853/page/20/