Page:The Kaleidoscope; Or, Literary and Scientific Mirror (1824-03-09; Vol 4 Iss 193).djvu/3

Rh patron to keep the quadruped as long as it might be his pleasure; but the money was laid before him in silence; and, as he still continued to proffer his services, a significant glance at Jupiter made both him and the hostess evacuate the room in an instant, and go down the stairs much more quickly than they had come up.

Chapter 4th.—A more serious disturbance.—All had long become quiet; but Jeremiah could not recover his sleep. Daylight began already to appear, when he thought he perceived something like smoke. He got up, opened the door, and found that he had not been mistaken: the staircase was in full blaze, and a violent fire raged below. He quickly filled his pipe, took his surtout on his arm, and looked out of the window to see what could be done that way. A leap upon the pavement appeared to be rather dangerous; but the chief sign of the house (a large sow of gilded stone) was placed over the entrance-gate at a little distance from the building, and he might hope to reach it. He succeeded to his wishes; and as soon as he was safely astride on the stone-representative, he began to bawl out lustily for help. It was some time before he could engage any one’s attention; because the house stood by itself, and there was none opposite: some early workmen took him for a drunkard, or for a madman, who was playing with his dog, to the annoyance of the neighbourhood. The cries of Jupiter were, indeed, quite as loud as his master’s, because he had not been able to follow, and his danger was greater: the flame had already penetrated into the room; and it was only then that the watchman saw what was the matter, and rang the fire-bell. Assistance was now speedily procured; but the engines were sooner at hand than the ladders, and the most efficacious way of preserving the man on the sow, seemed to be to drench him well with water, which was done accordingly. He bore this with great resignation; and when a ladder was finally produced, he entreated, for God’s sake, that it might be employed first in the preservation of his companion. The assistants thought themselves insulted by the request, and refused to comply with it; but when he offered a louis d’or to him who should do the deed, the competition became so great, that the dog would probably have perished, if he had not taken the resolution to escape by a courageous leap upon a water-cart, which happened to come within his reach.

Chapter 5th, which explains the object of the journey, and introduces a person of rank.—Jupiter was as unrivalled in the university as his namesake had formerly been at Olympus; and all the students envied his fortunate master, who had often refused the most brilliant offers, and whom even the greatest distress for money had never been able to tempt to the idea of parting with his dog; although he could not conceal from himself than the keep of the animal was infinitely more expensive than his own, which was itself none of the cheapest. Jupiter was in the constant practice of visiting all the kitchens to which he could get access, and to consider every thing as a fair prize that came within his reach: the fierceness of his aspect prevented the lawful proprietors from using violent means in keeping him off; they found it much more convenient to let him have the articles, which he had laid under sequestration, and to present his master with a bill of the damage, in which some slight indemnification for the alarm was either directly charged or tacitly laid on. An account of this description was one day given in by a tavern-keeper, whose whole stock of provisions had been attacked, and notably injured by the voracious brute. Mr. Schnackenberger happened, in his first emotion, to ask his friend Fabian Sebastian, whether he would still abide by the offer which he had lately made for the destroyer? the answer was affirmative; but as the purchase-money was of considerable amount, the buyer requested eight days to raise it. To this the seller consented; but, having received a remittance from home before the stipulated term was expired, he repented of the bargain, and laboured hard to annul the same; finding it, however, impossible to set any negociation on foot, he bestrode the first horse he could meet with, and set off for a celebrated bathing-place, with the intention to stop there as long as his money would last, and to enjoy the exclusive society of his dear Jupiter without interruption, until they should be finally separated.

The oddity of his situation, during the fire, produced, however, a circumstance which he could neither have foreseen nor expected. There was, among the various bathing-guests, a daughter of his own sovereign, whom the alarm had likewise brought to the spot, and who had no sooner understood that the sufferer was her countryman, than she interested herself with particular solicitude in his safety, congratulated him with her usual affability on his escape, and, finally, invited him to a ball which she intended to give in the evening. This operated a sudden and total revolution in the ideas of Jeremiah, and he accepted of the invitation, although attendance in ball-rooms was rather foreign from the character of his usual pursuits.

The fire had not spread very far, for there was a strong partition-wall between the part in which it had broken out, and the rest of the premises. Mrs. Liquorice had already prepared fresh quarters in an out-building, and she showed herself very anxious to make her lodger as comfortable as circumstances would admit. The side-glance which she had taken at his full purse, and his noble behaviour, during the night and in the morning, had inspired her with deep respect, and confirmed her in the favourable opinion which his manly person had made her conceive at first sight. 



The following short Essay on Murder, appeared lately in the Sheffield Iris: it is, no doubt, from the pen of the elegant poet, Mr. Montgomery, the editor of that paper:

“There is one crime, the earliest on record, that was committed out of Paradise, which all nations, barbarian or civilized, have agreed to punish in kind. “Blood for blood” has been the law of nature from the beginning, and whatever modern refinement in jurisprudence may propose in lieu of the punishment of death in cases of wilful murder, the universal practice to the contrary proves that instinctive and eternal antipathy to this species of violence, which is so identified in the human bosom with the love of life, that they grow up together like twin plants of opposite qualities from the same seed, for in moral cases this is no anomaly, every root bearing a twofold offspring of antagonist principles. Murder—taking it in the general signification of one person killing another, not by accident—is usually perpetrated for revenge or for plunder. In the first instance, it is frequently an act of sudden passion, under aggravated provocation, and accompanied by circumstances which palliate its atrocity, and reduce its character, in the eye of the law, to what is denominated manslaughter. But when it has been premeditated for the purpose of robbery, it is almost always accomplished with a degree of cruelty, from which nature recoils, and to which no consideration can reconcile the mind of any man, not himself hardened to the desperation of doing the like, should temptation and opportunity combine to inveigle him. At a late meeting of the Literary and Philosophical Society here, an ingenious paper by a member was read, exemplifying the natural relationship of the sciences, the aid which they alternately receive and communicate, and their increasing approximation in their progress towards perfection. Murder, of the latter class aforementioned, is the consummation of all villany; and seldom does an extraordinary instance of this occur, in which its direct or remote connexion with every other vice of superlative malignity, may not be clearly traced. The sins that corrupt, degrade, and destroy individuals, as well as disturb the peace of society, are all of one kindred: there is a mutual dependence, a reciprocal intercourse, an inevitable assimilation among them; nobody was ever addicted to one only.—Lying, cheating, and all the petty knaveries of the nursery are common, though in different proportions, to the child who is notorious for any one of them. Drunkenness, swearing, sabbath-breaking, and other vulgar offences against religion and good manners, are bosom companions, not solitary inmates, with those adults who are particular slaves to any of these excesses. In the highest ranks of wickedness, gambling, debauchery, forgery, rapacity, murder, and self-destruction, are in like manner so associated, that few of their votaries and victims are ever guilty of the greatest, without having graduated though all of the inferior, and continuing, as avarice or passion prompts, to riot in each.

“Such reflections have been naturally awakened by the circumstances of a recent murder, in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, the report of which has filled the whole country with horror and consternation. Whatever share the accused, or the suspected not yet in custody, may have had in the deed itself, the details of evidence, and the numberless rumours, false and true, on the subject, show that this crime originated in other crimes, of the most diabolical nature, in which all parties, from the assassin to the sufferer (including accomplices, and associates not immediately accessaries) were awfully implicated. The Hells, as they are called by those who are themselves in the habit of playing the devil in them (the gambling-houses, in ordinary English) have, on this occasion, opened their gates, and let out some of their lost spirits to betray their secrets, and exemplify their evils, when the infatuation which possesses their frequenters has reached its paroxysm. We mean not, however, to dwell upon these particulars at present; we have noticed the universal consent of all mankind in past ages to punish wilful murder with certain death, as testifying the implacable aversion of the whole species to this most hideous of outrages. The intense, absorbing, and increasing interest which has been excited in the late instance, notwithstanding the length and minuteness of the daily intelligence published concerning it, proves, that so far as our common nature is unsophisticated, there exists not in it an antipathy so deeply rooted, nor yet so agonizingly sensitive, as that against the deliberate spilling of human blood. The shipwreck of nearly two hundred vessels on our coast during the late gales, the drowning of so many seamen, and the miseries brought on ten times that number of persouspersons [sic] affected by this tremendous visitation from heaven,—these have been nearly overlooked, amidst the public sympathy provoked by a solitary murder. Fifty-five industrious colliers, in the exercise of their honest labours, were swept into eternity by one blast of subterranean fire, and numerous families were made fatherless in a moment, yet the account was read with emotion, almost as transient as the destruction, while every body that could feel pity for misfortune or detestation of crime, was bewailing the fate of a gamester butchered by some of his own gang, and execrating the cruelty and perfidiousness of the wretch by whom the blow was dealt. This was not wrong; we do not blame it; we participate both in the compassion and the indignation of our countrymen; but we state the fact itself to show once more the character of that antipathy to murder, which Providence has implanted in the human heart with the love of life; of which, indeed, it is the guardian principle. Yet, as members of society, we are so artificially modified by authority, by custom, by passive assent to what is familiar, that two men—princes of the blood, nobles, privy-counsellors, legislators, or persons of any degree above ‘the swinish multitude,’—shall meet, on account of some verbal offence, with loaded pistols levelled at each other’s heads—shall fire, miss, hit, fall, or survive,—and then, after having attempted to take away life, and to commit suicide by proxy (both necessarily involved by duelling) whether they miscarry, or whether they succeed, they shall ever after be deemed men of honour! So goes the world in this respect. But there is another respect, in which it goes a million times further in absurdity and atrocity—we need only name war, and add,

“There were many occasions, during the revolutionary contest, when the massacre in battle of thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow men roused far less commotion throughout all the states of Europe, whose subjects were among the slain, than has been roused among the people of this country,—which knows not what war is,—by the death of poor Weare, in a lonely lane, on a dark evening!” 

A gentleman’s house in the neighbourhood of Blackburn had a narrow escape last week from being destroyed by fire, in consequence of the servant, after sweeping up the ashes, and dusting the grate, putting the brush and cloth into a cupboard, which was set on fire. It is supposed that a hot cinder had adhered either to the cloth or brush. Fortunately a gentleman discovered the smoke issuing from the cupboard, and the flame was immediately extinguished.