The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence of his Orange
livery, is now a cross between a river-god and one of Dan's footmen. Let
him turn to the Mansion-house to revive his memory of the glorious
hip, hip, hurra's he has shouted in the exuberance of his loyalty, and
straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor O'Connell, proceeding
in state to Marlborough-street chapel. He asks who are these plump
gentlemen with light blue silk collars, and well-rounded calves, whose
haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders, and he is told that he knew
them of old, as wearing dusky black coats and leather shorts; pleasant
fellows in those days, and well versed in punch and polemics. The
hackney-coaches have been cut down into covered cars, and the “bulky”
watchmen reduced to new police. Let him turn which way he will--let it
be his pleasure to hear the popular preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or
the scientific lecturer, and if his memory be only as accurate as his
hearing, he will confess “time's changes;” and when he learns who are
deemed the fashionable entertainers of the day--at whose boards sit
lords and baronets most frequently, he will exclaim with the poet--
“Pritchard 's genteel, and Garrick 's six feet high.”
Well, well, it's bad philosophy, and bad temper, too, to quarrel with
what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence more seen than in the
universal law, by which everything has its place somewhere; the gnarled
and bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is exactly the
piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate; the jagged, ill-formed
rock that would ill suit the polished portico, is invaluable in a rustic
arch; and, perhaps, on the same principle, dull lawyers make excellent
judges, and the people who cannot speak within the limits of Lindley
Murray, are admirable public writers and excellent critics; and as
Doctor Pangloss was a good man “because he knew what wickedness was,” so
nothing contributes to the detection of faults in others, like the daily
practice of their commission by ourselves; and never can any man predict
failure to another with such eloquence and impressiveness, as when he
himself has experienced what it is to be damned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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