The Press.
London, England, 1854-12-23 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

THE BARBER OUT OF DOORS.
(Lord Lansdowne, in ridiculing the objections made to the Foreign Enlistment Bill by
Lords Derby, Elleuborough, and others, was pleased to say in the House of Lords
that if " a barber out of doors " urged such reasons against it, he would be laughed at.]
The Whig of ancient birth,
Though he deigns to dwell on earth,
The opinion of plebians very haughtily ignores ;
But, as it's Christmas time.
Will he stoop to hear in rhyme
A little that is said by the Barber Out of Doors ?
The verse is not the best,
Much neater was addressed
To my Lord by bards npplausivc—for example, Moore's ;
But, no matter how absurd,
Let the people's thought he heard,
Through their type—his Lordship's choosing—the Barber Out of
Doors.

The Barber thinks the friends

Whom his Lordship now defends
Do very little credit to St. Stephen's floors ;
All pomposity in peace,
In war like frightened geese,
All a cackle and a flurry, says the Barber Out of Doors.
He thinks that they've despatched,
To be madly overmatched,
An army to inhospitable Russian shores ;
Where blunder upon blunder
Proclaims, with voice of thunder,
Executive shortcomings, says the Barber Out of Doors.
He thinks that they display
Gross folly in the way
They send that army's clothing, physic, food, and stores ,
That the hardships of the tent
Are increased just cent. per cent.
. By the Cabinet's mistakes, says the Barber Out of Doors.
He thinks that the provision
For surgeon and physician,
To tend our gallant soldiers, and dress wounds and sores,
Is so stingy and so bad
That it almost drives him mad
To reflect on what they suffer, says the Barber Out of Doors,
He knows that noble lives
Are lost—that loving wives
Are widowed, ay and needlessly, by scores and scores,
For want of head and tact
In those who should exact
Obedience to a system, says the Barber Out of Doors.
He has listened to defences,
Evasions and pretences,
How one official blusters, and another bores ;
But neither vaunt nor twaddle
Could drive into his noddle
Any trust in the Department, says the Barber Out of Doers.
His heart is with the brave

Whose glorious banners wave,
Where, pointed on Sebastopol, the cannon roars ;
And he knows they only fear
The foemen in their rear—
The blunderers at home—says the Barber Out of Doors.
This opinion of the friends
My Lord just now defends
Is rooted in the hearts of the nation, to their cores ;
Which fact, if it be news
To his Lordship, will excuse
This dressing an old Whig by the Barber Out of Doors.

CHRISTMAS 1854.
Storm or sunshine, smiles or tears,
Can they touch the impassive years ?
Night and morning, do they feel
Human woo or human weal?
One more link is on the chain,—
Lo ! our Christmas come again!
Christmas! wont for many a year
Hearth and home to warm and cheer,
To our yule-log leading in
Laughing troops of kith and kin,
Jocund guest with hollied brow,—
How hath come our Christmas now?
Loud the unsated billows roar
On the Euxine's iron shore !
Louder yet the storm of fight
Raves on bleak Crimean height,
Where the murky war-clouds roll
Over doomed Sebastopol !

Balaklava! Inkermann !
Speak the proud names he who can,
Where our English tongue is heard,
To his inmost soul unstirred I
Read who can with measured breath
How our bravest rode to death 1