in the meanwhile cut, to insult the misfortune of brave men with the following overstrained and incoherent taunts: "Loud rise in England the gnashing of teeth and the oaths for revenge; foul play, foul play,' is called from lip to lip, which means, 'we have been beaten ;' foul play; we took gun-boats up the peaceful river to intimidate the Chinese cowards, and sweep all before us; foul play, foul play, we, instead, have been swept away. We thought we were the stronger party, and therefore ran up the signal for action;' the action has gone against us; we have had to fly, having been shot down like birds; therefore, foul play, foul play. Never was defeat so self-sought, so utter, so complete. The action,' for which the English admiral, of his own choice, 'ran up the signal,' and made the first movement, was literally a battue of the British assailants. They fell, not in tens, but in scores and hundreds, under the skilful fire of the long-despised Chinese. The Chinese did not prove helpless sheep this time, that is all. Their shout of victory will not be unheeded in the East. The signs redden in the sky; the days of Eastern conquests and plunder are over! The tide has turned on the Peiho.' "Here the overwrought woman uttered that piercing shriek, which, as indicated in the Revivals,' is the well-known characteristic of her complaint, and again fell, foaming and kicking, on her back, where she lay for the space of an hour in violent convulsions, insomuch that it took three men to hold her. "The sex of the writer of the foregoing extracts from the Nation is a fact, the discovery of which needs no clairvoyance. Nobody can mistake it who has ever had an opportunity of hearing the rancorous invective, the rampant mockery, the exorbitant imprecations of infinite and impotent hate, the rabid canine howlings uttered by an infuriated female of the lowest class, in the gripe of the police, and restrained by handcuffs from using her teeth and gails, "But the best of the joke remains to be told. Whilst Norah scolds and mocks as above in the columns of the Nation, Judy accompanies her sister's abuse with an article suggesting that Her Majesty should be graciously pleased to pardon Meagher, M'Manus, and-Mitchell! As if the Nation thought it was taking just the course calculated to render it an effectual intercessor with the British Government on behalf of Irish traitors-not to name both a traitor and a devilish and dastardly miscreant; the vitriolic champion of slavery. "How thoroughly Irish! For the newspaper capable of such wonderful consistency what a very appropriate name is the Nation!" What business, we ask, has such an article in a periodical professing to be intended for the relaxation and amusement, and occasionally the instruction of its readers, of the general reading public to whose support it appeals? In the number for October the 15th, 1859, we find in the leading whole page engraving, another insult to the Catholic religion equally low, equally pointless, and equally contemptible. We by no means admire the taste of those enthusiastic young men who insisted on yoking themselves to the carriage of Maddle. Piccolomini, and drawing her in triumph home from the Dublin theatre last September; but after all it was a pardonable folly, pardonable by older, wiser, and better heads and hearts than any the writers in Punch can boast; it was a tribute, not very refined nor very original, to a woman's genius, and one which has before now been accorded to infinitely less deservings, but it afforded Punch an opportunity for a mean sneer, too precious in its literary insolvency to be disregarded, and hence the following: ERIN GO BRAY ! "A pleasant display of warm-hearted Irish feeling lately occurred at Dublin, where Piccolomini has been singing at the Theatre Royal. The Dublin boys performed a graceful act of homage towards that interesting little warbler. According to the Freeman's Journal, the other evening, "On her issuing from the stage-door, and entering her carriage, the cheering of the assemblage became most vehement and enthusiastic. The fair donna smilingly acknowledged the compliment paid her. But she was hardly seated in the vehicle when the horses were unyoked from the pole in a twinkling; about a hundred young gentlemen collected round the carriage, and drew it at a rapid pace to the Gresham Hotel, followed by an immense crowd cheering heartily all the way.' "Now, herein the Dublin boys manifested an instinct of a truly noble kind, its nobility being precisely that which we recognise in that noble animal the horse. But, as in the case of that quadruped, might not the ennobling alacrity to draw a vehicle be utilized? Might not Mdlle. Piccolomini, at least so long as she remains in Dublin, be enabled to dispense with the hire of horses by availing herself of the gratuitous services of young gentlemen? They, doubtless, would only be too happy to place themselves at her disposal, and give her the benefit of the power and the inclination which Nature has implanted in their minds and bodies. Thus she might ride about wherever she pleased, in triumph and for nothing. What would the sprightly young vocalist think of a trip to Killarney and back again in a carriage drawn by Irish quadrupeds, or horses on two legs: young gentlemen of Dublin? They would cost her nothing but their keep, and would probably find themselves in food, which of course would consist of the verdure of green Erin. Even were there turnpikes in her way, she would get the expense of tolls reduced to the lowest denomination; for though we have, with our usual delicacy, called her cattle Irish horses, they would never be mistaken for horses by the toll-takers, and would assuredly be charged for at the smaller rates which are levied on humbler animals. They would be perfectly safe, though perhaps you could not exactly warrant them to go quiet in harness, as they would probably make a great noise, the nature of which is suggested by the title prefixed to these observations." Were the offence a graver one ten thousand times, the true humorist would hold his peace, and where he could not commend would have refrained from speaking. He, indeed, with a true love for the spirit of wit and humour, would have thought of Swift, of Sheridan, of Goldsmith, of Farquahar, and of O'Keeffe, and remembering all that Ireland has given to the genius of humour, would have blushed to utter the poor and threadbare joke which we have above extracted. An anonymous writer, sheltered from the public eye, would need to be a man of pure motives; if a dishonest or mean one, standing in the shadow of his namelessness, he thrusts forth his arm and stabs his victim to the heart, who in the full light affords a distinct mark to the assassin, and falls lifeless, or sorely wounded, without seeing whence the blow was struck. Well may we ask, therefore, what security is there for private character and reputation from the attacks of men who could pen such paragraphs as those we have extracted? We fear there is but that which the law of the land affords; the dread of a verdict of damages may deter them, but certainly neither right feeling nor a Christian spirit exercises any influence upon their actions. To proceed with our ungrateful but necessary task; in No. 896, vol. xxxv., for Sept. 11th, 1858, we find the following: "The Ultramontane Toastmaster.-At the dinner which the priests gave at Ballynasloe to Cardinal Wiseman, the usual disloyal toast was drunk, and the usual loyal toast omitted. As the assembly, with the exception of two persons, consisted entirely of eccle. siastics, the disaffection evidenced by that omission may be despised. The people of Ireland will drink the Queen's health in spite of their priests, who, at least when that toast is proposed, are unable, though they may wish, to deny the cup to the laity." VOL. XLVIII.-No. XCV, 10 866 What do the Priests,' asked Dennis, mean, · 'Bedad, they mean to drink,' said Thady, Our Scarlet, not our Sovereign Lady.' A morsel of choice profanity is here introduced to give spice and seasoning to the jest, which even with this addition is of the very flattest. Again, in page 143, of vol. xxxvii., the number being 952, for October 8, 1859, we are treated to a paragraph that for pitiful spite and rancorous intolerance, and yet more for gross mendacity, surpasses those we have indicated. There were few reasonable men of any shade of politics or belief who did not condemn Lord Derby's cruel and tyrannical dealing with the unfortunate tenantry of the Doon Estate. The warmest advocates of landlord despotism recoiled from the notion of visiting on an entire townland the guilt of one wretch. Without a particle of proof of actual connivance or participation in the crime of the murderer, whole families were ordered to prepare for expulsion from their homesteads, as the penalty for not leaving their daily labour to pursue over the country the guilty fugitive; fugitive we have a right to call him, for men generally fly after committing foul crimes; and we have heard nothing and read nothing that convinces us that this one remained sheltered and protected on the scene of his offence. But the measure of injustice and tyranny was filled to the brim, when the good and virtuous pastor of the parish was included in the list of the denounced. The rabid and bigotted portion of the press applauded the deed; and the very men who would have found in a breach of the seal of the confessional, the assumed justification of all the bitter abuse poured forth by them upon the Catholic religion justified Lord Derby's act as a proper castigation of the offence of preserving that seal intact. It would, indeed, be amusing, if it were not melancholy, to view the mental blindness and perverse inconsistency of these writers, who take it for granted that the murderer, reeking from his deed of blood, had gone straight to the great tribunal of confession, and that the man whose conscience was seared, and whose heart was adamant, sought spontaneously that refuge, to which none but those whose souls are softened, and who are penetrated by a sense of guilt, ever think of approaching. Were such writers worthy of refutation we might proceed to show how reverently and cautiously every Catholic priest dispenses the great powers with which the Almighty has invested him in this sacrament; how keenly he tries to look into the very inmost soul of the penitent, and how anxiously and scrupulously he labours to discover whether the sorrow of the sinner is the sincere outpouring of the heart, or the hollow profession of deluded self-love. "Ne Plus Ultra-Montanist.-Mr. Punch's recommendation to make short work with the Irish priests who refuse to use in aid of the law their absolute power over their flocks, has caused a vast explosion of wrath in the journals devoted to the ultra-montane hierarchy. Of abuse, especially from the tools of the priesthood, Mr. Punch has had so much in his time, while working out reforms in Church and State, and generally revising and improving the Constitution, that he can bear it very equably. But really, when it is advanced as a new grievance, that Lord Derby has caused notice to quit to be served upon the priest of the tenantry who notoriously harbour a murderer, and who, if ordered by that priest, under pain of his Church's thunders, to hand over the scoundrel, would do it in an hour, Mr. Punch cannot help thinking that there must be some other connection between Irishmen and Impudence besides their both beginning with an I." But we sicken over this filth. The curious in such matters may pursue the task truly, indeed, "ad nauseam,' through the latter numbers of Punch. We may indicate some versicles entitled, " Freedom for the Popish Press," to be found No. 955, for October 29, 1859, vol. xxxvii., p. 179; an illustration styled " Guy Fawkes," for 1859, p. 202 of the same volume, the number being 957, for Nov. 12, 1859, and "The Doom of the Pope," in number 964, for Dec. 31, 1859. We think the candid reader will admit that we are fully justified in our statement that Punch has lost its prestige, and become little better than an illustrated Morning Herald or Standard. We look in vain through its pages for a brilliant idea, a clever bon mot, an ingenious or interesting tale. Its glory has, indeed, departed, and lower it cannot sink, unless it disappear entirely from view. Knowing what it once was we shame to see the thing it has become. Even that portion still devoted to the humorous is |