WILL IT WASH? AN apparently funny invention has just been patented by gentleman of Manchester, MR. JOHN DE LA HAYE. It consists in a contrivance for submerging electric cables. Apparently funny we call it, because, even if we were not so wise as we should be, and are, experience, which would have taught even ourselves wisdom, would have made us know better than to make fun of any invention without sufficiently understanding it to be quite sure that it involved something impossible or absurd. There are wiseacres yet living who ought to blush at a gas-lamp, and hide their faces at the sight of a locomotive. We will not risk classification in their category, by comparing the project of MR. DE LA HAYE with the devices of the Laputan sagesbut its seeming oddity suggests to us a question which appears not to have occurred to any one of a numerous meeting of engineers to whom, at the Town-hall, Manchester, the plan was expounded by its inventor: who, according to the Times, said that "The plan he would adopt would be to encase a cable prepared like that for the mention), capable of floating it for a time on the surface of the water. The coating he proposed to use for this purpose he supposed would hold it on the surface of the waves while about five miles of cable were payed out from the vessel before it began to dissolve, and as it would dissolve gradually, so the cable would sink gradually to the bed of the ocean. By this means he calculated that there would always be about five miles of cable lying on the surface of the water in the wake of the vessel, and the remainder would describe an incline to within 100 or 200 feet of the bed of the ocean, so that there would be comparatively little strain, and consequently less liability of breakage. The cable would descend into the ocean almost horizontally instead of perpendicularly." Atlantic Ocean in a soluble compound (the composition of which he would not now In the above account there is a little parenthesis which deters us from recommending MR. DE LA HAYE to turn his attention to the problem of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. His soluble compound, he said, was one, "the composition of which he would not now mention." Iced cream adroitly disposed around a cable would perhaps support it in the manner above described, if it could be procured in sufficient quantity, and laid down continuously in weather not too cold -upon one condition. A dead calm would be required to reign at the time. At least the operation would not be practicable whilst the waves were running mountains high, even if the cream were laid down in long ice-bergs. It would be necessary that the Atlantic should be in a particularly good humour to enable it to be performed. A large flock of halcyons or kingfishers would have to be collected and trained, if possible, to produce the desired effect. With any ordinary substance it would be impossible to accomplish the design. But perhaps MR. DE LA HAYE employs an extraordinary substance, and is prepared to answer the question:-How about the waves? CRINOLINE FOR GENTLEMEN. O BLANK PUNCH, ESQUIRE. "I PROPOSE, Sir, to call them the INFLATED PEGTOPS. Under that name I intend forthwith to make them Patent. Had the Manchester Art Palace continued to be open, I should have exhibited these Treasures on my own lay figure. As it is, I must resort to other means to show them to the world; and I petition you, Sir, therefore to allow an illustration of them to adorn your pages. If you fear their exhibition will offend your lady-readers, allow me a few inches of your valuable space (space is always valuable,' even in the Morning Herald), and I will tell them what has tempted me to take this leaf out of their Fashionbooks. "In the first place, the dear creatures must believe me when I say, that I am perfectly incapable of joining in a laugh at them. However near 1 may unguardedly approach the verge of doing so, my better nature always is quite sure to get the better of me, and I then recoil from the enormity as though it were a precipice. When, therefore, I submit my new invention to their eyes, I do so without fear of their mistaking it for ridicule. I should not ask their sanction to my putting on my pegtops, if I thought they would consider them a take-off of their petticoats. In fact, if I imagined that the cuts which illustrate this article would be viewed by the dear creatures as cuts at their costume, I would rather, Sir, have lived when heads were taken off, and that myself, and not my sketches, had been brought to the Block. Acquitting me, therefore, of all thought of making fun of them, ladies will feel naturally curious to know, why I purpose wearing my Inflated Pegtops? and what can be the good of their preposterous expansion? To these momentous questions permit me, ladies, for the moment, to return you Quaker answers, by asking why do you wear Crinoline? where on earth's the good of it? Now, of course, ladies, I am not so outrageously absurd as to expect that you will favour me at once with reasonable responses. The utmost I can hope from any living woman is that, in answer to my one query, she should say, Because we choose; and, in answer to my other, she should tell me Not to bother. In ladies' logic, these replies would be accounted 'reasons; for, as SYDNEY SMITH the reverend, unflinchingly asserts, the mind female does not reason, in the sense in which the mind male understands that verb. "I will, therefore, ladies, take the liberty of answering my questions myself, and of seeking out some reasons-bona fide reasons-for you. Next week, if you please, and if Mr. Punch will let you, you will have the pleasure in your hands of saying the last word, and of showing, if you can, that I have jumped to false conclusions. Now, why do you wear Crinoline?-Because your next-door neighbours do? Because the EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH does? This would only prove what SYDNEY SMITH-that ungallant divine-has also said, that 'Woman is at best but an imitative animal.' Would you have your heads shaved, because your next-door neighbours had ? Your grandmothers wore hair-powder for no more reasonable reason. Of the two, I think a head clean shaved would be a sight more comely than a dust-and-dirt-bepowdered one. And pray, what have you to do with what the EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH does? What's EUGENIE to you, or you to EUGENIE? If an Englishwoman must take a Queen as Channel for one. her life model, let her be a loyal subject, and not look across the "But why do you wear Crinoline?-Because it is the fashion? Well, but who sets the fashion? the lady, or the milliner? the wearer, or the worker? Are you not all slaves, abject slaves, to your modistes? Is not every one of you at the mercy of her dress-maker: under her thumb and thimble as completely, sleeve and body, as though you were but serfs, and she enthroned in might, Empress of all the Bustles? But then there are the fashion-books. Following the fashion, of course you read the fashion-books. You consult them as your oracles; and regard them as infallible (being printed) proofs that Crinoline's The Thing,' let men say what they will of it. But you forget to ask the question, Who gets up the fashion-books? And might you not be startled if you learnt that in accepting them as absolute authorities, and bowing to their nod, you are in fact complacently salaaming to your dress-makers. "Why, then, do you wear Crinoline ?-Because you think it is becoming to you? Well, a bread-and-butter Miss might be excused such miss-conception; but that any grown-up Woman, who is passed her skipping-rope and pinafore, should entertain that thought, it quite surpasses man's believing. I cannot yield my faith to such a libel on the sex. The mind female may not reason, but it is not idiotic. The brain feminine is capable of ocular impression. Mirrors give the means of outward self-examination; and the lady who can look her cheval-glass in the face, and say deformity becomes her, must have a blinding pigstye in her mental vision. "Then why do you w- No, don't say that. Don't catch me up so short, that it's to please the gentlemen!' I really cannot suffer you to foster that delusion. After all we've said and written to you, how can you dream of doing so? Pick out any number of unbiassed men you will-by 'unbiassed' I mean, being neither henpecked fools nor lovers,-put them in a jury-box (an opera one will do), and ask them what they think of you, in Crinoline and out of it. There would not be need of much deliberation. Were I their foreman, I should have to say (however it might pain me to use such harsh expressions) "When lovely Woman stoops to Crinoline, she ceases to be Woman, and becomes a Monster." "This would be their verdict. Were a million men empanelled, still I'd bet you gloves all round you'd not find a dissentient. "After all, then, I must own the Why you wear your Crinoline? is an unguessable conundrum. The mysteries of female dress are not for men to fathom. To the male eye there is neither use nor beauty in exuberance of skirt; or, at least, its only use appears to be in hiding dirty stockings, or some personal defect. Men in general believe, that the inventress of Crinoline was a sloven about her ancles, or had possibly splay feet. And then they draw the cruel inference, that those who copy her invention are impelled by reasons similar: seeing that no better have as yet forthcome from them. "Mais revenons à nos Pegtops. My reasons for inventing THEM it needs no blush to palliate. I did so purely out of compliment to your superior sagacity. As you seem to think that Nature is improved by wearing Crinoline, let me profit by the thought, and share with you the benefit. If the 'human form divine' be beautified by hoops, being human I may claim an equal right with you to wear them. For what reason should my sex debar me from the privilege? Why should you keep all the good figures' to yourselves? Free trade in them, say I! The unfairest of your sex would surely not be a Monopolist. "In one point, though, we are not quite on an equality. In the matter of expense I have certainly the better of you-or I should say, of your husbands. My Pegtops are not costly in the mode of their expansion. To inflate them there is no need of such raising of the wind as there is with your air-petticoats. Old oyster barrel hoops are cheaper than steel fixings. And I can tie them in myself-non tailori auxilio-without calling in a STULTZ. Expansive as you please; but not expensive likewise. Having thus explained myself, I ask you, ladies, not to laugh at me if you should see me wear them. Recollect that I shall do so in pure compliment to you. Cumbersome they may be; oppressive; inconvenient; nay, I'll even go so far as to admit them to be ugly! But then, what of that? Rightly viewed, their very ugliness will constitute their beauty. For the more they may with truth be called cumbrous and uncouth, the more they will resemble those stiff petticoats of yours, and the more you will appreciate my delicate intentions. To keep the THING in countenance, so long as you wear Crinoline I shall sport my Pegtops; and I hope you will agree, ladies, with one who even now admires you, that— 66 IMITATION IS BUT THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY !" MR. COX ON ENGLISH HISTORY. MOST members of Parliament enliven their little holiday by giving lectures to their constituents. The mind of MR. Cox has long been nobly intent upon a similar pursuit. The young men of Finsbury have been recently enlightened with his peculiar views upon English History. The whole lecture was a great treat. It was given before the assembled intellect of the borough, at the Wat Tyler, abutting Constitution Piace, near the spot where formerly stood the Mechanics' Institute, which has since been converted into a shooting gallery. Our limited space spitefully deprives us of the pleasure of giving the entire lecture, but the following extracts will suffice to give the reader a tolerable taste of what the intellectual banquet was like: "Gentlemen (began MR. Cox, after smoothing his brow, and coughing nervously two or three times), it was not until after the Flood, that WILLIAM the Conqueror sprang upon the British shore, exclaiming in his rich Norman dialect, Veni, Vidi, Vici. In a moment the land, feeling the iron foot-print of his power, lay like a door-mat at his feet. He did not abuse his power, for PLINY tells us in his Commentaries that, night and day he went about searching for the body of HAROLD, which, greatly owing to the remissness of a bloated aristocracy (cheers), in not offering a suitable reward for its recovery, has, like the secret of the authorship of the Letters of Lord Chesterfield, never been discovered to the present day. We next come to ALFRED, and the fine picture he presents in history, of selling cakes at three a penny, which has been so beautifully engraved by WILKIE. This picture, Gentlemen, is in its line, only a proof impression of what a king can do when he is driven to earn his bread, as ALFRED was driven by the ST. CLEMENT DANES of that dark period, long before gas was invented. (Two cries of hear! hear!) From bread to BACON, the transition is only natural. It is only in the reign of QUEEN ANNE, of whose death I take this premature opportunity of giving you the early intelligence (a cheer), that we find BACON in his prime. However, I need not tell you, what must be sufficiently well known to you all, that the philosophy of BACON is pure gammon. There is no doubt of that, and so I will not follow the bad taste shown by LADY BASIL MONTAGUE, and others, in pouring butter upon BACON. (Loud cheers.) Let us rather follow the flowery meads of Smithfield, and passing the fires which are blazing there, and one of which afterwards burnt down three-fourths of the city, run to meet our old favourite, GUY FAUX. The city at that time had risen, like a second Venice, from its ashes. The Battle of Battle Bridge had been fought. CHARLES had lost his head at King's Cross. MONK long ago had retired into a monastery. The political horizon was as black as that of Manchester, when all of a sudden, GUY FAUX burst upon the astonished view of the nation, like a meteoric sky-rocket. He is generally drawn as a lank lanthorn-jawed miscreant, but that, my friends, is only a squib of the day. I can tell you, Gentlemen, that Guy was a match for any king. (Long-continued applause.) It is true that he was unpopular-and why? Because he attempted to blow up the House of Lords, as LORD JOHN RUSSELL has since done, because they would not admit the Jews into Parliament. Is LORD JOHN carried about in a chair? No-his chairing is always of a more triumphant kind. Is straw put into LORD JOHN's boots? is a pipe stuck into his mouth? is he compelled to strut about the streets with a Pope's cap on his head, a Roman candle in his hand, and all the Cardinal virtues trampled, like so many oyster-shells at Billingsgate, under his feet? No-no-no. Then why, I demand, are these iniquities put upon poor Guy, who, in spite of his being broken at Tyburn on a Catherine Wheel, is, and ever will be, one of the most shining lights of the British Constitution. (Tremendous applause, during which the meeting was suspended for ten minutes.) In the heat of our enthusiasm, we must not forget HENRY THE EIGHTH We may not admire him as a king, but as a husband we are bound to confess he was first-chop. BLUE BEARD wasn't a patch upon him. (4 laugh.) He attempted the Lives of the Queens of England, and got through several of them, long before MISS STRICKLAND ever laid her hand upon the series. (Sensation.) The four GEORGES follow in their due order. They had what I call a Georgeous reign of it. (Another laugh.) One of them went down at Spithead, but which of the Royal Georges it was, I should be out of my depth if I attempted to tell you. No statement should be delivered freely, any more than a letter, unless it has the Truth, like a postage-stamp, boldly conspicuous on the front of it. If it were not for accuracy, the multiplication-table would not have a leg to stand upon. Fair-play was observed by the late MR. RICHARDSON even at Greenwich. The Battle of Waterloo was fought, if I mistake not, during the present century. I am not deceiving you, Gentlemen; have witnessed it myself at ASTLEY'S very often. I never saw NAPOLEON, but I am told that he was something like MR. GOMERSAL. WILLIAM THE FOURTH has written his name on the Reform Bill, so familiarly called BILL, because it was carried during his immortal reign. Our present monarch is HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA. This last piece of information concludes my lecture. My historical facts are all uniformly correct. I am too much of a lawyer not to know that 'What is writ is writ.' Service, like practice, makes perfect, and it is specially true of a legal practice; but should there be any misrepresentation, I must beg of you to bear fully in mind, Gentlemen, that I am your Member. I can safely take upon myself to say, that it would not be the first time, to my knowledge, that Finsbury had been misrepresented." [Tumultuous cheering, and a general rush for great coats and sticks. MR. Cox had to take refuge in a Police-van that was passing, in order to escape from the enthusiastic embraces of the multitude! A SNEER AND A BLUNDER. THE advocates of the Sepoys, and advocates of all or any blackguards and scoundrels who provoke the just ire of everybody else, have repeatedly cast an extremely ridiculous taunt against those who desire that the Indian mutineers should be hanged. "It is all very well," they say, "for writers sitting quietly at their desks to call for the extermination of the revolted troops." Just as if the wish for the destruction of those wretches would not be rather highly intensified on the writers' parts, if, instead of sitting quietly at their desks in England, they were sitting, or standing, or occupying any other position of danger from insurgents in India. Probably, gentlemen who sit quietly at their desks and sympathize with the Sepoy murderers and torturers of women and babes, would, if situated themselves in peril of those miscreants, sympathize rather more than they seem now to do with the victims of their cruelty. MARRIAGE AND ITS DIFFICULTIES. Such praise as this, and happiness the same, JANE too, at Hastings, as the breeze she courts, THE BATTLE OF THE TELEGRAM; OR, LANGUAGE IN 1857. ATTERLY marriage has become a more perplexing "O FORTUNATI nimium!" the sage ceremony than ever. We Of Mantua styled the farmers of his age; say this, merely judging Knaves, who on Pan-pipes strove for cheese and curds, from the notices inserted Rough as their goats, and playful as their herds. in the newspapers, which are positively terrifying in the mysteries they shadow. The rite appears to be attended now with such bewildering complexity, that one almost wonders how young couples can find courage to confront it. The boldest-hearted bachelor must quail at the ordeal he now daily sees described, and the strongest-minded of her sex must shudder at the knot, when she finds how many terrors are involved in tying it. Even to ourselves, who are matrimony-proof, the marriage notices occasion a continual perplexity. As members of society, it is of course incumbent on us daily to peruse the first half-column of the Times, and for gossip's sake to take especial note of the marriage portion of it. To this hard labour we have long been sentenced, but of late its hardness has so much increased that there is really some excuse if we occasionally grumble at it. What with the names of the officiating and assisting clergymen, and the appendages and pedigrees of the bride and bridegroom, together not unfrequently with those of the distinguished relatives who were present at the ceremony, we are generally puzzled to know who has married whom; and as business men we calculate we lose a daily average of twelve minutes and three-quarters in our efforts at unravelling the problems that perplex us. As a sample of the mysteries which puzzle us at breakfast-time, and sadly interfere with the process of digestion, we beg the reader's notice to the following advertisement; which, merely altering the surnames to avoid the charge of personality, we quote from the Times in its bewildering entirety: "On the 9th inst., at St. John's, Notting Hill, by the three brothers of the bridegroom, the REV. JON JONES, M. A., the REV HENRY JONES, MA., and the REV. ROBERT LANCASTER JONES, B.A., TOM JONES, Esq., of H.E I C.S., third son of the late REV. JOHN JONES, D.D., to ANNIE, youngest daughter of the late JOHN BROWN, Esq., of Birmingham." her to face it. one. Really now, of all the marriages that we can call to mind as ever having startled us, we think this of TOM JONES is perhaps the one most formidable. We may certainly congratulate him on the pluck he has displayed, in braving such a ceremony as has faintly been depicted: and it delights us to observe that his ANNIE is in this respect a most befitting helpmate. Having the foreknowledge of what she must go through, it showed, we think, uncommon strength of nerve in Viewed in the most favourable light, it can be no joke being married by three clergymen: and when the parsons are all brothers, and the brothers of the bridegroom, there is something in the pomp and circumstance enough to overwhelm You hear of persons sometimes "marrying a family," but here are actually a couple married by a family-or at any rate, we may assume, by far the major part of one. Supposing even the three reverends the mildest-faced of men, it must have tried their brother somewhat to confront them at the altar; and to the lady they were making then their Sister-in-law their aggregate appearance could But if it puzzles us to think why these three clergymen attended, it still more perplexes us to guess how they performed the ceremony: and in behalf of lady readers, who must share our curiosity, we regret that the report has not supplied us with full details. As no mention is made of either reverend brother having principally officiated, while the others, in the usual phrase, "assisted" at the service, we infer that each of them had equally a Voice in the matter; still the question remains open whether they all spoke at once, or whether each one had share of what was to be said allotted him. In the first supposition, if the service were a chanted one, the "organs" of the trio might have blended with advantage: but the notice in the paper being silent on the point, we must perforce regard it as a moot one. not but be formidable. a Although we own it somewhat puzzles us, we are quite disposed to view the presence of the parsons as a mark of unadulterated brotherly affection. But the cynical are not so clemently inclined, and might assign the meanest motives for the brethren all appearing in their bands. It might be argued by such people, that something like a scene was intended to be got up, and that the supernumeraries appeared to add to the affect: or it might be said that, the Divorce Bill having recently been passed, it was fancied that three clergymen perhaps might make the nuptial knot a triply tight one. For ourselves, we have a horror of such mean imputations. But although perhaps the brothers showed their faces at the ceremony just to show that they completely countenanced the match, we really think it was a waste of work for all of them to do the service. There cannot be more firmness in the bonds of matrimony from this 3-parson power being used to clench them, and therefore in this extra "benefit of clergy" there can be, at least as far as we can judge it, no advantage. My son, young Toм of Trin. Coll., Oxbridge, raves Now TOM's young friend from Wadham, all last Long Through areas lone where crass" policemen prowl. I do protest against these novel rhymes; And, Sir!-not only do the Poets rave And leave their riddles for TOM's clearer brains. But Tom now says that our Philologists Trust not Tigers. By the Speech of MR. WILLOUGHBY, at Leominster, it appears that the Sepoys mutinied chiefly because they had nothing to do. Not being able to gratify their ferocity in regular war, they vented it in murder and cruelty. it broke loose and glutted itself. That is to say, we kept a tiger and ceased to feed it, when TOLERATION. BARON ROTHSCHILD has consented to give away the Flitch of Bacon next year at Dunmow! |