PERSONS WHOM EVERY BODY HAS SEEN.

BY LAMAN BLANCHARD, ESQ.

1. PERSONS WHO HAVE "GOT A SPIRIT."

IT often happens that the man who has got a spirit, resembles the boy who has got his first shirt-collar, he is continually plucking it up. He thinks himself bound to display it, and it is of a quality so retiring, that if he should fail to pluck it up it never would be seen at all.

Life is hard work with him; for demands upon him to "show his spirit" are constantly occurring, and it has to be plucked up first. But his enjoyment is in proportion to his labour, for he is perfectly satisfied that he is ever and anon performing something heroic.

Thus after a long twelvemonth's toil at the forge or the desk-the poor man grinding his heart daily into sand for the old Hour-glasspent-up, smoke-dried, choked, bent double-aching in every bone, and sick at the very soul-sentenced by the law of birth to perpetual imprisonment with hard labour-of a sudden a great resolution springs up in his mind, like the magic beanstalk, in a single night; he conceives the great idea of a holyday, and going to Gravesend by steam! He plucks up a spirit, and puts down eighteenpence.

Or worse still; perhaps the bitterest ingredient in the cup of destiny is that sweet creature, a wife. He loves, honours, and obeys her ;;-he is allowed to drink nothing but tea, and that always with her; he never presumes to go out without permission, stating always where he is going, and when he shall be back; he never so much as looks at another woman, except by his wife's direction, to notice some ugliness of feaure, awkwardness of manners, or heresy in dress, which he invariably detects, whether it be observable by other eyes or not; when, in the very midst of the nag-nagging which is supposed to be sometimes the reward of such virtue, he starts up in open rebellion, seizes his hat at ten o'clock at night, darts out of doors, or windows, and returns home at dinner-time next day "much bemused with beer;"-yet not so, for he had plucked up a sperrit," as he calls it, and ordered strong ale. Now and then-albeit he acknowledges some religious regulations which forbid it—he plucks up a spirit and sneaks to the play. He can only resent an insult by a like effort. He has been known to fling back an imputation upon his consistency or courage in very formidable language; and even went so far as to accept a challenge which was the consequence-happily, however, his spirit had not mounted high enough to present any obstacle to a peaceful arrangement upon moral grounds.

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When reproached with subscribing a shabby one pound to a charity that had the strongest claims upon his extensive means, he resolved, after a fortnight's consideration, to increase his contribution to one guinea—because, as he said, he always liked to do things in a spirited

manner.

It is not always, however, when he plucks up a spirit that he is helped forward by it even to this extent. The rich relation from whom he anticipates a fat legacy, one day screwed up the daily-affront-pipe to a pitch beyond mortal endurance.

Oct.-VOL. LXVI. NO. CCLXII.

P

"Now is the time," said outraged forbearance, "now is the time for me to pluck up a spirit!"

And forth he went, spirit and all, to buy a barrel of oysters to send to the fat legacy-leaver; with some capital H.B.'s, just out.

It is reported, moreover, that having always voted upon one side in the borough he resides in, the other side at length offered him a bribe; upon which he immediately plucked up a spirit-and took it.

Flintz, the usurer, never plucked up a spirit but once in his life, and that was when he opened a bottle of wine, to treat a customer by whom he was making sixty per cent. But verily it was wine-rich, old, and cold as its owner! The customer remembered its rare quality eighteen months afterwards, when he called to negotiate another mortgage.

"Ah! Flintz, that was wine! Any more of it, eh?"

"Yes," there was a remnant of the old stock still left; and Flintz, after some delay, handed to his visiter a glass, not "full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene"-on the contrary, it was the vilest, sourestbut Flintz insisted that it was some of the same, and the visiter with many wry faces, refuted the libellous assertion.

"So much," exclaimed Flintz, "for that most affected of all pretensions to judgment-judgment in wine. You are sure it's not the same!-different quality, different vintage, different altogether! Now, sir, it happens to be the remains of the same bottle; and it has been here in my safe, under lock and key, exactly a year and a half."

The spirit that wants plucking up, is hardly worth having, but the spirit that is never down is a more troublesome incumbrance. Its owner had first shown his spirit at school, by bestowing upon a beggar, who was sure to make the good deed known, a half-crown which he purloined from another boy for that purpose. He next displayed it in a habit of thrashing his fellow-apprentice (the junior one) as often as he himself might incur correction from his master.

When he started in life, he started with spirit; that is to say, having no money, he borrowed a large sum, and speculated with it. When he lost it, there were plenty of people to come forward with supplies enabling him to renew the game, because he had speculated in such a spirited manner; and afterwards when he failed, every body said that he had failed with great spirit. He set up a phaeton and pair, because the man next door set up a horse and gig-for it was not in his spirit to be eclipsed by a next-door neighbour; and when his business fell off to nothing, he purchased the said next house without money, and two others next to that on the same terms, throwing them all into one, and decorating them at the expense of several obsequious and extremely grateful tradesmen, who always like to see things done with spirit.

He is not remarkable for that mild temper, which is a terrible inconvenience to persons who have to show their spirit constantly. He is exceedingly tyrannical; but it should be admitted in justice to him, that he is chiefly so upon small points. He will quarrel ten times a day, but then it is sure to be on grounds not worth contesting at all; and though the battle may involve broken heads, the dispute is about the ninety-ninth part of a hair. Indeed, the pettier the cause of quarrel, the prouder is that feeling of inveterate firmness with which he holds to his text and scorns compromise; for the plain reason that he then most shows his spirit.

The phrases most frequently in his mouth are, "Thank Heaven, I've got a spirit!" My spirit would never allow me to give way!" "That's just my spirit!" You may know him by either of these exclamations. The imp of the bottle had no such influence over its unlucky possessor, as this thing which he calls his spirit exercises over him. He is its slave, believing himself its master.

His favourite country is France-it is a nation that has got a spirit. He would be an excellent person to send out, as representative of one civilized country at the court of another. Civilized countries are fond of acting with extraordinary spirit.

If he should gamble away his children's bread, or steal the very wife out of his friend's bosom, he must not be denounced as the incarnation of treachery and wickedness. He has no hatred for his offspring, no love for the lady; but he moved in a certain society that required him to act with spirit.

When he shoots an acquaintance through the head instead of listening to reason, he is impelled by the same necessity. He must always drive very near the edge of the precipice, lest people should think he is afraid of driving over. However ill-mounted, he is bound to take the impracticable, neck-breaking leap in a steeple-chase, because the man with the better horse has just taken it with prodigious spirit.

Deduct from the huge sum-total of mischief and misery in the world the amount fairly chargeable to the principle of acting with "spirit" whether between nations, between classes, between man and man, or man and wife, and at the end of a single twelvemonth you would accumulate a stock of original sin and suffering, large enough to set up a new world twice the size of this.

2. PERSONS WHO NEVER HAVE

ENOUGH OF A GOOD THING."

NAPOLEON seemed to be of opinion, that, to deserve well of her country, a woman could not have too many children; and if all sovereigns were Napoleons, the opinion would be perfectly just. As it is, there happens to be considerable doubt upon the point, as well in states as families; but it by no means follows, while admitting the possibility of a superabundance of blessings in the nursery, that we should concur with that scamp of a soldier in Farquhar's comedy, who thinks it possible that a man may have "too much wife."

Of many other good things, however, "too much" is easily to be had. We need not allude to those gross material excesses, of which five-shilling records are magisterially made in the morning. Every one who has been once tempted to taste the other something-every one whose cheek has flushed over the one cool bottle more, will eagerly admit that it is needless. If they hesitated, we should produce to their confusion, the evidence of the little bluecoat-boy, who dining at home one day with his brothers and sisters, astonished them with the splendour of his appetite, and yet was worried to take more. More! no, that was impossible. Nature that abhors a vacuum, abhors equally three pints to a quart vessel. Yet he was sorely pressed, and naturally anxious to gratify affection.

"Well," said the brave little fellow at last, looking fondly, wishingly, and yet half despairingly at the dish-his heart was full, we may be sure- "Well-perhaps if I stand up, I can!"

It was an acute thought of the boy's-we should rather say, perhaps, it was a beautiful instinct; and a noble effort too it was that he then made; he stood up to it, almost as Thomson stood up to the peaches-but it was a graceful heroism thrown away-he couldn't.

Let it be a lesson to others how they aim at the prohibited enjoyment, too much of a good thing. When they have been round to a lady's friends, and duly circulated the story of her intended elopement— when they have What-a-pity'd it in one family, No-wondered it in another, and They-do-say'd the victim's reputation every where, let them go home and get a little refreshing sleep after their charitable labours, without troubling themselves to write a kind note of sympathy, by way of communicating the tidings to the lady's mother; because this is really too much of a good thing.

And when they next get hold of a famous joke-an entirely new anecdote of George Canning, or the last original repartee of a more reverend wit-let them by all means, as usual, relate it at full length to the next dozen persons whom they meet, in regular succession; but let them forbear to repeat it to the said dozen when all assembled together; as though every one of them had not been separately and privately tortured, and with a genuine anecdote which each claims, perhaps, to have exclusively manufactured.

These retailers of good things fancy that civil listeners never can have enough of them. The civility is partly in fault-there is too much of it.

These are the advocates of "wasteful and ridiculous excess," who would like to gild refined gold and paint the lily. They think "Paradise Lost" so fine, that they wish there was more of it :-a few more books, and it would have been delightful;-and then they go and read all that has been written about it, to eke out the poet's abbreviated spells. They are of opinion that a poem is nothing without a vast volume of notes. When they have read Burns all through, they sit down to read the glossary, which they enjoy prodigiously. If they had seen Kemble in "Macbeth," they would have made rush homeward to read his essay upon the character, by way of heightening their enthusiam. They maintain that "The Wanderer" eclipses all modern novels, because it extends to five volumes.

They are the people who, at the play, sit out two farces after seeing the tragedy, encoring a comic song in the last piece, and calling for "God save the Queen" at the close. At the opera they are for having every thing repeated, beginning with the overture; they call for the principal singers to appear between every act, and three times at the end-to abide the pelting of a floral storm. When the ballet begins, they begin to encore; when it terminates, they are lost in wonder why people don't encore, not the brilliant points merely-but the ballet: they are of opinion that two such pieces, with an opera in five acts, would form a charming evening's entertainment-not a bit too long.

A book is no book to them unless embellished “with numerous engravings," and no advance of price. A newspaper must be as large as a London-tavern table-cloth, or there is nothing in it. They must have too much of a good thing, or they fancy they have not enough. Whether they are in favour of two-hour sermons, is more doubtful. We never heard them express a wish that the parliamentary debates were lengthened.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO A FASHIONABLE VOCABULARY.

Non jam eorum sed ipsius generis humani me pudet, cujus aures hæc ferre potue→ runt.-AUGUST. EPIST.

We cannot have every thing our own way in this world, no matter how high our station. However fortunate may be the lot of fortune's favourites, there is ever something wanting, some petty desire ungratified, some trifling object of ambition placed just beyond our reach, which in ipsis floribus angit-which dashes the whole cup with bitterness, and makes all the rest not worth having. No matter whether the thing thus absent without leave be of major importance,-health, a contented disposition, an heir to the estate, or a better-tempered wife; or whether it be only the removal of the Sybarite's crumpled rose-leaf, or a bow withheld by a titled next-door neighbour, c'est égal; the annoyance is just the same, and the injustice of the dispensation seems the more severe, because fortune having done so much, might as well have done a little more! It looks so very like mockery!!

What, then, is it not true that every thing may be bought for money? Has a millionaire any thing more to do than to open his pursestrings freely, in order to place the whole world at his disposition? Not quite so fast, good sir: money may buy many things-but not all : for, though according to a somewhat Irish verse, men may

Sell for gold, what gold can never buy,

there is no reciprocity in the case; and there's no buying for gold what can't be sold for gold.

Do not ask, reader, for a catalogue raisonnée of these unpurchaseable somethings; for there is no use in troubling you with particulars, for which you have only to "inquire within." There is, however, one great acatallactic (as Dr. Whateley would call it), on which we have a word to say; and though it is not one of Mr. Roebuck's boroughs, nor the smiles of the last new opera-dancer, it merits the spoiling of a new pen.

The reader will hardly be at a loss to anticipate what we intend. There is but one thing, thus circumstanced, which is so generally interesting to Englishmen of all denominations as to deserve a place in a popular miscellany like the New Monthly. Let the religious magazines discuss doctrines; the Mechanic's meddle with wheels and levers; and let the Freemason's deal with-what do freemasons' periodicals deal with ?—the New Monthly addresses itself to all mankind; and its matter must be as catholic as its readers.

Now if there be one thing more universally interesting than another, to Englishmen of all categories, and coming more closely home to their business and bosoms, it is gentility. The great object of every man, woman, and child in these happy realms, is socially to get on in life. From the lowest to the highest (but one), every body looks upwards in society; and nothing more grievously afflicts the mass of in