DESCRIPTION OF THE TERRESTRIAL CHRYSIPPUS. 155 been known to propagate in our barracks or camps, although it is imagined that the eggs have been sometimes introduced by evil-minded persons. The Grumblerilia, like every part of creation, has also its appropriate and wise use, as the noise of the insect is a supposed specific against the morbus aristocratia; which dangerous and putrid disease is always, at least, kept under by the alarming clickings of the Grumblerilia. This insect also usually infests farmhouses after plentiful harvests. There is a description of people who thrive and grow plump by its bite; these are the editors and news-dealers of London, who keep factories of these insects spinning continually, and always find customers for the poisonous webs, at sixpence a paper-full: the consequences to the buyers are sometimes dreadful, as the inflammation enters at the eyes, and soon spreads to the heart, giving uneasy days and restless nights; often driving the patient to absolute insanity, and ending by death under various symptoms. The gibbet convulsion is frequently the closing paroxysm, and not unusually the razor hamorrhage or the pistol locked-jaw. ** DESCRIPTION OF THE TERRESTRIAL BY DR. STRIPMASKI FLAGELLANTI. Read before the Risible Society. THE size of the body of the British Chrysippus varies according to the different species-one of which is in the ratio of one half of the larger one the other of one third. Naturalists have not deter mined if it should be classed as animal or vegetable. Without a microscope it shows the resemblance both of a lion and of the iris, or fleur-de-lis. Although it has no motion of its own, it is very easily set in moи 6 tion, 156 DESCRIPTION OF THE TERRESTRIAL CHRYSIPPUS. tion, and is made easily to fly all over any town or district. A chrysippus, by the single contact of my own finger, has sometimes so closely attached itself, that by the most strenuous exertions and applications of my friends, it could by no means be made to quit its hold. I have also learnt, by a continual attention, that with care they easily procure young ones. Upon trying a hundred of them together they were found at the year's end to produce five complete chrysippi. To make them produce more, is a dangerous experiment in this country to the philosophers who attempt it. A chrysippus of the larger kind may be divided into twenty-one substances (whether animal or vegetable we again determine not), every substance being of the size of the parent chrysippus. These may again be subdivided, each of them into twenty-four, and every one of these is both larger and heavier than the first chrysippus. The only difference in the change is that of colour; for the first is yellow, the second white, and the third a sort of copper hue. The age they attain differs extremely, some living a century or more. They live longest when housed in bags or chests, but they seldom live long when alone. A single one properly applied will make a man talk a full hour, and say whatever you desire; but sometimes a far larger number is requisite for this. It will also, at times, make a man blind or deaf, without the least detriment to his organs. It also is the strongest love-powder in the world, and has such a power over the female sex, that it often produces love, or its appearance, in the prettiest girl to the most worthless, ugly, old, and decrepit among mortal men. In fine, it is a medicine that even physicians are so fond of taking, that few of them visit a patient without swallowing a dose. A SUMMARY ( 157 ) A SUMMARY OF THE TRIAL AND CONVICTION OF MADAME SQUALINA CANTABILE, FOR VARIOUS ROBBERIES AND MISDEMEANORS, BEFORE consisted of many counts; among which were, that the said Squalina Cantabilé had for two years committed depredations on the pocket of Mr. John Bull and his family;-and that latterly, not having the fear of groans before their eyes, she and her accomplices had entered into a conspiracy; and, by hiring a house at Bath, had contrived to inveigle and draw in many unwary people, to the unlawful game of gamut; where, during a sort of intoxication, they became stripped of numerous pieces of the current coin of this realm, called half-guineas, seven shilling pieces, &c. against the statute. She, with various accomplices, was farther indicted, by persons named Blunt, Qak, &c. &c. of robbing them of their annual benefits. -To all of which counts she pleaded" Not guilty." The pleadings were energetically opened by Sergeant Shakspeare and Counsellor Arne-We regret the necessity of omitting these master-pieces of oratory, and the great compression we are compelled to use. The first witness called was Mr. John Bull, to whose venerable and comely appearance the court paid great respect. Mr. Bull, on being asked if his lady and family did not also attend to give evidence, replied, that the good old lady Mrs. Bull had been very much indisposed for the last six months; in which time she had sorely suffered, first with a Convention colic, which had distorted her physiognomy; after that with a Corunna discharge from her vitals, night and day for a month; that she was now in a very high York fever, from which serious consequences were to be feared. *This was, we believe, the first literary attack made upon the Catalani mania, That That Miss Hibernia Bull had resisted and repulsed the prisoner at the bar; and that Miss Scotia Bull had not been attacked. The court then ordered him a chair:-he declined the indulgence, by stating that his bodily condition was no longer so replete and full fed as to require it; as the great and celebrated Doctor Pitt and his pupils had put him for some years upon a regimen that had quite cured him of corpulence: Mr. Bull appeared rather consumptive, and to swallow with difficulty. He then swore in a clear and manly detail, that the prisoner at the bar had, since her arrival from France (a fact which seemed to surprise many persons in court), purloined, snatched, drawn out, and otherwise robbed him and his family of many thousand pounds, to his very great prejudice, loss, and detriment.-Cantabilé, the prisoner, being here asked if she had any counsel to cross-examine the evidence for her, replied, that the gentlemen of the long robe had uniformly refused taking a brief against Mr. John Bull. The judge then informed her, that she should ever have the assistance of that court, who always acted as counsel for the prisoner. The court then asked Mr. Bull on his oath, if he was not sometimes mad, or at least subject to temporary derangement of intellect? Answer. No, I am always sound-minded; but I own I am frequently troubled with a singing in my head, and dropsical weight in my palms... Miss Blunt was next sworn: she deposed, that she sung at the Bath concerts, almost without pay or salary, trusting in remuneration to an after-benefit-concert, which was this year nearly annihilated by the prisoner's previous purse-depredations: that the con cert-factor had artfully concealed the intended robbery, to the moment of the close of his own gatherings, and offered no other consolation, than "Le grand honneur to sing at Bath;"-as he spoke very good Eng. 1 THE TRIAL OF MADAME SQUALINA CANTABILE. 159 lish, although a foreigner. The court then asked her, if she had not always expressed her vast satisfaction at that honour?-She owned she had been a little weak that way, until she found that neither bakers, butchers, nor landlords were collectors of-Notes of honour! The court was by this time so exceedingly crowded, that we could only imperfectly collect, that the next witnesses were public performers, who severally deposed to the actual loss of their winter benefits, by the retrenchment of nights, resulting from the prisoner's forcible entry four times upon their premises, with her accomplices, armed with fiddlesticks, and other wea pons of annoyance: that it was in vain to resist them; as, besides being protected by Mr. Gem and his friends, many of them were cut out for high feats; which the deponents were not. That the robbery was of the most serious consequence to themselves and families, many of them having wives and children. 匾 The evidence for the prosecution being closed, the prisoner called various persons to her character, some of whom the court objected to, as being her accom➡ plices: one Sacchini, alias Something, was forbid to be sworn, as a change of names appeared at best suspicious. A tenth cousin of a great person, a Mrs. Home-he-ran, had walked away very properly, as she had been merely employed to look at her own fingers, and to stand in the way of more active and able assistants. The concert-factor, after giving the prisoner the usual Old Bailey character, "dat he never knew her rob, nor sheate, nor steala before"-was very closely questioned and admonished by the court, who observed to him, that as a patronised and successful foreigner, the aid of sympathy and liberality was expected from him, towards those whose livelihood arose, in great measure, from his employ; they desired an explanation respecting Miss B.-After a shrug of recollection, two prises de tabac, and as many helas! he elocuted ; dat |