The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-17 00:00:00

strange eventful history," once brought home at one
o'clock in the morning, God knows whence or by whom,
and found by the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for
him in the moonlight, dead drunk on the gravel at the gate !
The paper on " Cottages" is chiefly remark-
able for the following vivid portrait of a
drunkard :
There is no occupation, small or great, insignificant or
important, to which he can turn, for any length of time,
his hand, his heart, or his head. He cannot angle—for
his fingers refuse to tie a not, much more to busk a fly.
The glimmer and the glow of the stream would make his
brain dizzy— to wet his feet now would, he fears, be death.
Yet he thinks that he will go out—during that sunny blink
of a showery day—and try the well known pool in which
he used to bathe in boyhood, with the long, matted, green-
trailing waterplants depending on the slippery rocks, and
the water ousel gliding from beneath the arch that hides
her " procreant cradle," and then sinking like a stone
luddeuly in the limpid stream. He sits down on the
bank, and fumbling in his pouch for his pocket-book,
brings out, instead, a pocket pistol. Turning his fiery
face towards the mild, blue, vernal sky, he pours the gur-
gling brandy down his throat—first one dose, and then
* another—till, in an hour, stupified and dazed, he sees
not the silvery crimsonatpotted trouts, shooting, and
leaping, and tumbling, and plunging in deep and shallow;
a day on which, with one of Captain Colley's March-
Browns, in an hour we could fill our pannier. Or, if it be
autumn or winter, he calls, perhaps, with a voice at once
gruff and feeble, an old Ponto, and will take a pluff at the
partridges. In former days, down they used to go, right
and left, in potato or turnip field, browny brae or stubble
—but now his sight is dim and wavering, and his touch
trembles on the trigger. The covey whirs off, unharmed
in a single feather—and poor Polito, remembering better
days, cannot conceal his melancholy, falls in at his master's
heel, and will range no more Out, as usual, comes the
brandy-bottle—be is still a good shot when his mouth is
the mark; and having emptied the fatal flask, he staggers
homewards, with the muzzles of his double-barrel fre-
quently pointed to his ear, both being on full cock, and
his brains not blown out only by a miracle. He tries to
read the newspaper—just arrived—but cannot find his
spectacles. Then, by way of variety, he attempts a tune
on the fiddle; but the bridge is broken, and her side
cracked, and the bass.string snapped—and she is restored
to her peg among the cobwebs. In comes a red-headed
etoitkingless lass, with her carrots in papers, and lays the
cloth for dinner—salt beef and greens. lint the Major's
stomach ecunnera at the Skye.stot—his eyes roll eagerly
for the hot water—and in a couple of hours he is dead
drunk in his chair, or stoitering and staggering, in aimless
dalliance with the scullion, among the pots and pans of an
ever-disorderly and dirty kitchen. Mean people, in shabby
sporting velveteen dresses, rise up, as he enters, from the
dresser, covered with cans, jugs, and quaichs, and take off
their rusty and greasy napless hats to the Major; and, to
conclude the day worthily and consistently, he squelches
himself down among the reprobate crew, takes his turn at
smutty jest and smuttier song, which drive even the jades
out of the kitchen—falls back insensible, exposed to gross
and indecent practical jokes from the vilest of the un-
hanged—and finally is carried to bed on a handbarrow,
with hanging head and heels, like a calf across a butcher's
cart, and, with glazed eyes and lolling tongue, is tumbled
upon the quilt—if ever to awake it is extremely doubtful:
bat if awake he do, it is to the same wretched round of
brutal degradation—a career, of which the inevitable close
is an unfriended deathbed and a pauper's grave. 0 hero!
six feet high, and once with a brawn like Hercules—in the
prime of life too—well born and well bred—once bearing
the king's commission—and on that glorious morn, now
forgotten or bitterly remembered, thanked on the field of
battle b./ Piston, though he of the fighting division was a
hero of few w,:rds—is that a death worthy of a man—a
soldier—and a Christian? A dram drinker! Laugh!
laugh! Look over—lean over that stile, where a pig lies
wallowing in mire—and a voice, faint and feeble, and far
off, as if it came from sotne dim and 'emote world within
your lost soul, will cry, that of the two beasts, that bristly
one, agrunt in sensual sleep, with its snout snoring across
the husk-trough, is, as a physical, moral, and intellectual
being, superior to you, late Major in his Majesty's
regiment of foot, now dram-drinker, drunkard, and dotard,
and self-doomed to a disgraceful and disgusting death ere
you shall have completed your thirtieth year. What a
changed being from that day when you carried the colours,
and were found, the bravest of the brave, and the most
beautitul of the beautitul, with the glorious tatters wrapped
round your body all drenched in blood, your hand grasping
the broken sabre, and two grim Frenchmen lying hacked
and hewed at your feet ! Your fatherand your mother saw
you name in the " Great Lord's" despatch; and it was as
much as he could do to keep her from falling on the floor,
for "her joy was like a deep alright !" Both are dead
how ; and better so, for the sight of that blotched face and
those glazed eyes, now and then glittering in fitful frenzy,
would have killed them both, nor, after such a spectacle,
could their old bones have rested in the grave.
The remainder of the article is a very elegant
and interesting résumé of " cottages," whether
ornee or otherwise, with their inhabitants, and
a humorous dissuasive against taking one of
these habitations for a summer's residence.
"An Hour's Talk about Poetry" is a paper
full of masterly criticism written down in an
unpretending style. Wilson here reviews the
pretensions of the various poets and poetasters
of the present day, small and great, in order
to find an answer to the question " Has the
present age produced a great poem ?" While
taking the opportunity of. passing warm eulo-