The Press.
London, England, 1857-06-13 00:00:00

570

" TORIA, and burlesqued the part of a lillipu-
" tian Cromwell, and ordered public works to
" be done in his own name, without consent of
" Queen or Parliament. It was while residing
" in this street also that HALL got into angry
" collision with his Marylebone friends,
" whom he offended by the majestical air
" which ho assumed after his verbal associa-
" tion with the family of the Medici. He had
" previously been connected with the
" Waddingtons. Here, also, he lived while
" engaged in his Vandal assaults upon the
" public gardens of St. James's-park. It is
" only by the irreparable injury inflicted on
" the Queen's gardens that HALL'S name is
" now preserved. It was supposed that in his
" fantastic ambition he desired to become a
" Peer. But he had to content himself with
" the patent of ' Magnificence,' humorously
" bestowed on him by Lord MALMESBURY.
" Opposite to where the Marylebone dema-
" gogue lived is the house (now much
" altered) where a public man of a different
" stamp resided, Lord RAGLAN." But we shall
not go farther with the Peter Cunningham of
a century hence. We return to the con-
sideration of Sir BENJAMIN HALL as he is now.
Unquestionably Sir BENJAMIN HALL, all
jokes apart, is an extraordinary character in
his small parochial way. He is emphatically
a " representative man," and presents the
finest example of a metropolitan member who
shakes hands with some thousands of the
" people." An ex-demagogue in office, he is a
capital specimen of a silent and salaried sup-
porter of Official Liberalism. Towards Sir
BENJAMIN HALL himself we have not the least
antipathy ; to us Sir BENJAMIN HALL has often
been a source of infinite amusement. We have
seen and heard him in the House of Commons
while engaged in " Ben-Hailing" English
bishops and Irish landlords. We have smiled
at him while he was earning his first title of
" Sir Benjamin Brawl." We have laughed at
his laborious efforts to kindle a big bonfire for
roasting a Puseyite curate. We have wit-
nessed his heroic rage while trying to give
utterance to the petty passions of a vestry.
We have noticed the difference between his
demagogic pulsations when he had no chance
and when he had some chance of a place under
the Ministry. His silence under the Coalition,
when the army was rotting in the Crimea, his
cautious avoidance of anything which could
commit him, or nip the strawberry-leaves on
a panto post futuro coronet—all the small acts
and platform genuflections which exposed
him in Parliament to the dislike of many and
the mockery of more could not fail to invest
Sir BENJAMIN HALL with exquisite absurdity.
He is a Radical born for promotion in the
official Gazette, and for " laughter" in the
Parliamentary reports.
In order properly to appreciate the felicity
of Lord MALMESBURY'S patent of precedence
given to " Sir Benjamin the Magnificent," it
would be necessary to see Sir BENJAMIN called
out in the lobby by some of his Marylebone
friends. The door-keeper, without meaning
anything satirical, cries, "'Who wants Sir BEN•

" JAM IN HALL?" and a glance at his air and
attitude, and a recollection of his new titles,
could not fail to convulse with laughter any
one with a sense of humour. He seems as if
oppressed with the consciousness of the
majesty of his own nature as a Welsh cousin
of the Medici. He knows that the responsi-
bility of being a great men is onerous, but he
cannot help that. He looks serenely proud of
his admitted rank as