was piece of furniture planned by Belial for Mammon's pleasure, so commented upon, so abused-in every respect, an object of so much observation and mortification-as this same piece of mottled drab. In many lights, it had a greasy look or as if a party of American smokers had "camped out' upon it. Think of such an issue for one who, as my Mrs. Bell puts it, "carried cleanliness to a sin!" It was a crook in Priscilla Gotobed's lot: a Mordecai in her gate. Secretly did she hope that some disaster would befal it that it would wear out immediately. But no, it was as strong as Scruple's self. What was she to do? By one of those ingenious reasons,-which suggest themselves with peculiar aptitude, I have often thought, to persons of tender consciences, she found out that such a thick covering on the floor "made the parlour stuffy," and despotically turned out her own particular fancy in furniture-for a large-patterned red and white Indian mat too impatient to heed that it had been made by "those poor tawny idolaters, the Hindoos!" After all, her's is but every one's case. I believe it may be depended upon as certainly as Lord George's stability, or Mr. Benjamin's belief in "the Asian mystery," that every man, woman, and child, be he ever so self-denying-ever so ascetic, short of a Fakeer or a Yogee, will have his or her “little mottle" somewhere! Nay, even those most frantic deniers of " pomps and vanities," who make a merit of sack-cloth, and a sin of clean linen, have "also" their spiritual extravagancies-their favourite tinges of Isabel colour (the classical hue of unwashed linen)—their orthodox or heretodox zig-zags of dirt, in which Taste finds its diseased indulgence its distorted outlet. Why, then, call that finical which is but human?—or questionable, which is merely another expression in form of that principle of vital variety which makes different the blades of grass, and colours no two tulip leaves alike? I don't like fools who faint over old teacups, or rave about a ribbon ; any more than the sourest people, who have commented on our back parlour, since my lame boy took it in hand-but since I must eat and drink-why, pray, may not I have a fancy in my plate and my saucer-just as well as you, good Master Fume, have with your pipe-head?-as you, manly Squire Fogle, with your “ varmint bird's-eye choker?"- -as you, excellent and valuable Friend Gotobed, had with your "little mottle?"

66

But there is a great warbling kept up by the families of Bird, Tree, Rock, Flower, and other such dear rural people,

66

66

against my poor lame, boy, and his fancies as "cockney," "sophisticated," trumpery, conventional," and the like. "Nature is enough for us!" they cry. Compared with her, your best Art is electrotype-plating for gold-Britannia metal for silver-and Palais-Royal strass for diamond! Now good friends and also ye Gardeners, Planters, Farmers, and Shepherds of my acquaintance who "take up the wondrous tale," and fancy that it is healthy and genuine to be critical on 66 the Bagman's" treasures and pleasures you must bear to hear that you are as prejudiced and vulgar as us poor town-folkwho have no orchards to "chew the cud" in-no rose-beds, among the odours of which we can lose the unpleasant scent of knavery and mortal decay-no mountains for our souls to ascend, till Heaven seems very near! You are one-eyed and behind your time. The days were, when Ignorance was not merely felt to be bliss-it was marketable as a prime "respectability"-People praised the Lord that they could not speak French-valued their own souls the more for having no music in them" put their dig." in sneering at men and women of genius in despising women: and other such brave and easy devices. Why, your Laureate, in his very letters on those "privilege-breakers" the locomotives, which provoked me into print-tells you that the love of Nature on which you so pique yourselves-is" a fancy pattern" got up within the last hundred years since Gray wrote poetry, and Architect Kent designed landscape gardens and court petticoats-and Brydone and Moore were the Travellers elect. It is a class-cry, as vicious as the scandals of a great city or a small cathedral town ;—a falsehood as baseless as Cowper's reference of the country to Divine parentage, and his account of the Town as a merely human and "hollow thing -to say that we cannot taste both: Art as well as Nature-nay that the love of one, does not quicken fifty-fold the reverence of the other. Why may we not make our houses beautiful—because you have your hills and your meadows, and, for their out-of-doors sake, are willing to dwell in mildewy cottages, with the plaster peeling off the walls, and death-watches and other nameless vermin beneath the wood-work ?-Why may not we wear clean blue broad-cloth and our wives Turkey-red cottons, or emerald greens, "when we take our walks abroad" in our Row ?-because it suits, you to slouch about in your lanes, in a hat which is shaped like an old mushroom, and gloves which would receive lodgers

T

:

and because your Mrs. Gardener, "like the bee about her flowery
work," doth sing in brown leather gaiters? Would you think
it civil or christian in us, Sir and Madam, to throw the tastes
and habits which circumstances and position have encouraged,
in your teeth? We town people cannot live in bowers, like
Moore's "Love and the Novice and the pure Sephardim at the
Feast of Tabernacles. We must put up with-iron-black walls,
tall chimneys plumed with smoke ('tis my lame boy's phrase),
pavements reeking and steaming with rain, or blazing and
untidy in dry weather. Put a box of flowers outside any one of
our windows for a day, and you will take it in with some new
"little mottles " on every leaf which remind you of a mourning
shop therefore let us paint our walls brightly-and have our
floors carpeted with some deep rich hue, and hang our curtains
in pleasant curves. But because we do; have we no eyes, think
you, for a waterfall,-or a tree struck by lightning-or a field
rich with the thick grass and thick flowers of June? -or for the
wide sea-shore, when the sun goes down?-or for daybreak in a
mountain pass?-We have one sense more than you :-the
common sense of making the best of our circumstances, and
enjoying the pleasures of our neighbours when we can, without
criticising them because they differ from ours!-Yes: let it be
uttered widely and believed implicitly, there is no such thing
as a separate and solitary taste, in Nature,-save it be made
such by a predisposition to monomania--or by the pressure of
harsh and untoward circumstances which have provoked one gift
or talent into prominent existence, leaving no room for others
to grow.
There has been a quantity of very curious speculation
about the undeveloped characters of Shakspeare; with regard
to which I am always reminded of the only two neat lines in
"Dr. Syntax

"Heaven pardon those who were to blame!
The child is gone, which never came!—”

But of the undeveloped tastes which lie buried under Ignorance or Prejudice-are withered when "scarce out of the ground" by Ridicule or doomed ere they come to a hearing by Bigotry-methinks there is too little count. How can we be thankful enough that our poor lame child has been allowed compensations which give him a career of hope and cheerfulness-a man's place among men? And why should we not be grateful, also, on our own

account, for the new pleasures and harmless interests he has brought into a quiet household?

"Who cares about taste, save the taste of food, now when so many millions of fellow-creatures cannot get a morsel to put into their mouths?" was a question put the other night, with all the triumph of a knock-down argument, in answer to some inoffensive remark of mine (I make bold to think). The speaker was one of your Power-Men, as the new-fangled German English of the time might describe the class of persons who are always talking of the folly and effeminacy of the world we are living in-about "cutting his way through a cane brake" in a colony, and such like vigorous attacks of Fortune-never, let me mention, doing such feats ;-and, in short, is one of the heads of the Brute Force Association, whose proceedings give rise to so many strange tales among the common people. Mr. Mallett's remark (methinks his proper name ought to be Sledge Hammer!) is about as charitable and as clear-sighted as the scheme for the alleviation of Irish famine promulgated the other day; which proposed that every man should kill his dog :not to be barbecued by way of contribution to the Food Fund, but by way of renouncing a comfort, and accomplishing an economy. I think I never saw dear good Mr. Vavasour so thoroughly irate as on this proposal being broached. "What will the man himself give up "asked he, with more of an effort at a sneer than I could have believed possible to him.-"He has no dog; of course! Of course, he does not smoke !-But I know that he drinks coffee instead of brandy-and-water. Come will he give up that?—What right has he to choose what other people are to sacrifice? Some people have a taste for shoe-buckles (I had a cousin who left sixty pairs when he died)—and some for books they never read. every man has his taste; and to begin with other people's dogs, as if they were the only luxury in the world (poor, innocent, dumb creatures!) is going too far!" We all laughed: who could help it? But my lame boy hit the right nail on the head still more strongly." And what will Mr. Mallett do for the paper-stainers, the wood-carvers, the gilders, the lace-makers, the calico-printers,' said he, "when they are thrown out of work, to put food into other people's mouths? Or are they not to have their taste of food?” Mrs. Bell was so pleased with Sampson's speech, that she would have had him write it in a letter by itself, to "The Brickbat." It is better, however, where it is: I don't want the boy (he has enough on his hands already) to get a taste for authorship.

But

But Mr. Mallett is not the only person who tries to knock us down. "See what comes of your taste!" cries another chorus of speakers who are never done provoking us since we got the shops closed an hour or two earlier than formerly, by horrible stories about Dancing-houses, Penny Theatres, and the like: croakers, whose only business in life seems to be perpetually multiplying the story of George Barnwell so as to extend it as much as possible : and who absolutely go on as if we were so many Millwood manufacturers.-What then,-are the young men of England at such a pitch of "filthiness," that hard labour alone can keep them out of mischief?-And mark an odd inconsistency. A dancing, singing, guitar-playing, criminal (as I pointed out a couple of months ago), is made, thereupon, a Prison Pet. A shop-boy who goes out to dance and listen to guitar-playing, is, therefore, voted a Prison Bird elect. Why, in the times of terror, during the first French Revolution, a linen-draper's apprentice, all but condemned to the guillotine for having been suspected of speaking civilly and looking piteously upon Marie Antoinette, was pardoned by one of the blood-thirsty tribunal that made an end of human lives, like the Dragon of Wantley, or "just as one would eat an apple"-because a pair of pumps and a clean cravat were found in his pocket-"Those who dance," said the Rhadamanthus, "cannot be conspirators!" You will open no new entertainment or privilege to the many, which shall not, at its commencement, let in grave abuses. Who has forgotten the abomination of shameless and shameful press-literature, which ten years ago, overrun your town, now dwindling year by year-its promoters driven back into the starvation and obscene dirt in which they were littered-by the plain good sense of newspaper readers who ask for teaching-and not trash nor treason?-When your Parks were first opened as widely as now-there would have been but a poor chance for either flowers or wild-fowl whereas, they tell me, that in St. James's Park, one may pick up all manner of hard words and new ideas from the porcelain labels ("taste" again!)—and that the birds are so thoroughly at home and jolly there, that no less a personage than H. R. H. the Prince, desired, not long ago, to acquire thence a very grand gander, as one of the most pompous, prosperous and ponderous specimens of the genus known to exist. Ere you cry down our tastes good Mrs. Sowerby-ere you launch your red-hot shot against them, zealous Master Gathercolereplace them by something better! See if a little superintendence and sympathy-the giving up of an hour on your own brown