The Press.
London, England, 1853-12-03 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

DECEMBER 3, 1833.

SKETCHES OF RADICALS.
8.-THE FRATERNAL RADICAL.

Is certain immortal pages Edmund Burke tit nun► of some intellect
in his day) cautioned the Freud' Repubßeams against being imposed
upon by the noise of the sympathising Liberals here. lie took the
liberty of pointing out that they were but few anti unimportant indi-
viduals; likened them, in fact (which was too bad), to •• grashoppers—
" making the field ring with their importunate chink ; " further con-
trasted them, in pursuance of his figure, with the" thousands of cattle "
making no noise at all ; and fi►ially dismissed them as the " meagre
'' and troublesome insects of the hour." When I think of the bright
page of that beautiful intelligence, I sometimes wonder whether our
" grasshoppers" are of a more important character than those which
ho pinned, prepared and labelled for the amusement of posterity in
his great museum.

There is no doubt that they are more noisy, and are audible much
farther off, than their representatives even in that dist►ubed time.
But that is a phenomenon which must be properly viewed.
It is one result of the diffusion of newspapers that it multiplies
the sound of everything ; while the careless ear and the long one are
apt to imagine that the thing itself, on account of the multiplication of
echoes, is per is tremendous. But this is a fallacy. It is true that.
when Sproggs or Stilton in one day makes a speech, the speech rcvur•
berates up and down, owing to the mechanical facilities for its trans-
mission. But the important matter still is—who made it ? What
amount of wisdom, of personal influence, of respectability, of weight
in tl►e country, attaches to the speaker ? Stilton is Stilton, do what
you will with him. Take a donkey into a room lined with mirrors and
you have a hundred images of him ; but there is one donkey only as
the practical result after all We are imposed on by machinery
more than by anything in our day. And, when we see a Stilton's
vulgar violence embodied in type and repeated a hundredfold, we are
inclined at first blush to think that something formidable is abroad,
though, indeed, the only question of importance is—" Who is Stilton?"
The Radical Sympathiser, then, is in a large measure a creation of
machinery. Because we have electric telegraphs and cheap steamers,
we have Stilton and Co. running over to Paris and fraternising with
Flambeau. Stilton finds life in England dull ; the climate (as To:liking,
on the strength of a moustache and three weeks in lloulogne, will inform
you) is execrable. Ills poem (" Mor►►ing in Paradise," the subject of
which is a revolution in heaven, ending in the establishment of an angelic
republic) won't sell a copy, and he has a gene►al sense that he is no-
body. At this stage of his reflections the lucubrations of the " foreign
eurrespondent" come in. Bah ! what are they doing in 'Warsaw?
How goes the movement in Tuscany ? " There is a rumour of a
seizure of cartridges in the Rue des —!" There is always an
opening for a man in this department, which is, or was for a long time,
less used up than the ordinary topics of agitation. In the meanwhile
the cholera (which is indeed a dull topic in comparison) opens ifs
foreign intelligence up, and operatives starve, while the energy of
Stilton employs itself in tea parties to Flambeau, and Couteau, and
other great patriots, who do us the honour to accept our hospitality,
and detest our institutions.

Flambeau, who is of opinion that our country is going to the devil.
might at least take a quiet comer in the edifice while it lasts. If we
give him a shakedown in the old tenement, let him at least refrain
from kicking up a hubbub on the stairs, and concocting a mutiny with
rebellious parties in the scullery. But this is a self-restraint we need
not expect from his crew, it seems. Fellows who have been kicked
out from every capital in Europe, who first plotted revolutions, then
achieved them, and then, when they lmd done that, could make nothing
of them, but stood staring at the work of their own hands till their
countrymen turned them out in disgust, should be modest and quiet
for a little, at all events. But not so. Flambeau and his friends must
join here with the knot who are at the head of our agitation, and help
them in their miserable parodies of the agitations of the Continent.
Perhaps this is natural, but Flambeau should at least consider why we
are able to give him an asylum ; why we are still in a decent state of
prosperity ; and what relation the little English crew who affect to
"fraternise" with him bear to the immense mass of the English public.
Let Flambeau distrust, to begin with, the flattery he hears about
the "mission" of France, "spark lighted in a French bosom spread
the flame of." &c. &e. England became what she is by being England,
by the spontaneous growth of her own elements, and not by conscious
imitation of any other country. When we Al imitate France, we pro-
duced a not very respectable Court, and a singularly improper drama ;
and our greatest authors are those whom the French nation can neither
read nor understand. What we owed to Boileau we repaid by contri-
buting to the education of Voltaire.
But as to our revolutions, we have never had a secolation in
England, in the sense in which you, my dear Flambeau, understand
that term, whatever Milton may tell you. The movement of the
seventeenth century was done by the peptilus, not by the plebs. It Wile
led for the most part by the nohlesxr, to whOm Hampden, and

733

John, Essex. belonged; and the victorious army was composed of
substantial yeomen and farmers. Anything more ludicrously unlike
a Red Republic than the Commonwealth cannot be conceived by man.
Though the King was beheaded. he was treated like a gentleman, and
his son *as restored with ilia honours of n god. What are we to gain
by imitating the extravagances of the tng•isß and bob-tail of con-
tinental towns?

Fraternisation is one of those ideas which Stilton and his friends
receive and expound with much gusto.
That " peoples " will fraternise on any very extensive scale, I, for
one, do not expect, observing that no little colony of foreigners can
settle itself in a neighbourhood without a disturbance constantly
requiring the presence of the police. What HUM may become when
Stilton and Flambeau lucre polished hint up and put bun to rights
we cannot of course pretend to say. But as he exists at present his
" indite 'duality is a very strong feature in him ; anal what is nation.
ality bk.; the individuality of a nation ? I constantly observe the ex-
treme difficulty of katernisation in life : few clubs are harmonious;
few villages ; few large fatuities. Don't the Scotch Manila different in
character end tendency from the English, the north of England in a less
degree from the south thereof, and 60 ; and is there not a deter-
mination to nation stamped on a race by its own nature and traditions,
which nothing ever washes out or puts down 1"lo be sure, you meet
individuals who call themselves " Cosmopolites" (and who are always
rife in artificial aunt decaying periods) : but the Cosmopolite who is at
home all over Europe is still the creature of ENrope. Ile would be a
stranger among Asiatic! traditions. I take the liberty of pronouncing
this part of the great scheme of the Sympathisers peculiarly imprac-
ticable. I don't wish for the kiss of the Judas of Republicanism ; and
I fear it is by an odd coincidence that we thank of Judas as
being Red!
On the whole, however, we must not exaggerate the importance Of
Stilton and his friends. For Flambeau and his, they are more to be
pitied. if Flambeau does not bear exile patiently, why, neither did
Cicero. We can pity the poor Atys* of polities who comes howling
down to the shore calling on the " Patria " which he hos lost, And
bewailing his condition. As for Stilton, to him we may apply our
usual test. What has he written ? What can he do? The public
(which still remains English) will not mistake the tigure for a great
figure because stuck up on a column of a report and Maki runs piruous
by an accident. That said unimportant Stilton should be insolent to
his Sovereign into the bargain damns him in the eyes of every English-
man, and stamps vulgarity on a face which, striving to be terrible, suc-
ceeds only in being ignoble !

•Vide I 'Mullins.

FRAGMENT FROM AUCER'Fi TALES OF OXEN FORDE.
From a MS. of the Nineteenth Century. Collated by one of her Mejeetre
University Commissioners.
TIIE UNATTACHEI► CLERK OF OXENFORDE.
nosy they did show a Clerk of Oxenforde,
That unto I►autologe* well I trove•
And lerning rare of all kindes was yeven,
And youth of thynges in earthe and Leven.
Full salw•e was his look, his goun thredbare,
For upon meal he lived,f and swiehe•likc faro;
For he hadde geten yet no seholarshippe,
And so they culled him " unattached," a quippe
I undertake ye ken (but a philosophro
Nor mete loth reeke, nor golden nu•rks in eofre,
And men to Oxenforde go not for progge,
Nor champain wine, ne Ilinton's ice, no grogge).
His landlady, I wot, full Bond ceonomieke
As well no Aristotel, sith that her ticks
For board and lied and herberwe
Five pounds per quarter weren, smale porde!
And all that of his frenden he might hente,
On Texts books by his Professor: %petite.
By Seinte Frideswide, he was a propre Wight,
Albeit in yourtesgy oft-mended (light.
Halve starved ho mighten be, or wormer hal►pe,
But to Professors ever humbly dotl'cd his eappe.
• i. e. The science of knowing a very little about w very great number of tliingn, an
n•co lido 41 by the (►=ford University Commission.

+ " I asked him if he tneant that he lived on meal only, prepared in different ways
He Maid,' Yea.' 1 then went to his landlady, and asked whether he was so poor as that
lie could not afford anything better? She said, ' Not at all ; he has abundance of money.
I asked, ' What is it then that he &Wit With it r lie lays it out on books ; and, says
she, ' what do you think he paid me at the end of last 114.14/11.1011 for his whole nocesaaries ?
1 bought for him everything that he required for foist, and supplied him with fuel, raw
dies, and lodging—slid the whole amount was 4/. I 7a. for the months.' --Raper( if her
ifqiestie ('useermissiomers fur the Scottish Universities, " such brave struggles might perhaps
be witnessed in Oxford too, if the poor were admitted to the I•niversity, as of toltl.wrg
out being forced to join any College or hall."—('lssuarid us the abort is the Oxford Itgovrl,
p. 49.
Textbooks, especially on sciences fur which proftssorships are endowed, apivear
to be always deficient and when a successful catoliihite open, his professorial ahop
for the first time (i.e., if he does give lectures ), he immediately tunas out all the wares
of his preileecsitor, and lay, in an entirely new Mork. We cannot say how many treatises
on logic are the annual average, nor how many tronilatienia of the ethics are att
in hand • but we have no doubt that the professional 'velem is calculated to C=b
hand barb to everything—from metaphystcs down to tal.k.turning,