The Sun.
London, England, 1845-05-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAY.
BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

The loud cries of " No Popery," the Maynooth
Bill, and the backsliding of Sir Robert Peel have at
last roused Blackwood from his slumbers, and com-
pelled him again to return to politics. This excuse
for such a long and dreary silence is not a little cha-
racteristic of the class to which he belongs. He
wishes to go with the Tory leader. He can have no
hope in Russell, or Palmerston, or Howick—they
would be tenfold worse than Peel. He therefore
waited to see if an accident would occur, by which
he might be able to catch something to make a good
plea for adhering to his party. Unluckily, the course
into which Sir Robert Peel has entered is so clear
and defined that not a turn or a winding was left for
the great Apollo of northern Toryism. He is obliged,
therefore, to make the best of his pitiable case, and
simply lament in tears the degeneracy of the man
who was regarded as the only prop and stay of Con-
servatism, and the last hope of the Protestant Church.
The reasons he gives for his long silence are curious :
" Of late," says he, " this journal has a good deal re-
tired from the strife of politics. Our readers must
not misunderstand this. It was not through any
treachery to that duty of hope which we have been
insisting on as sacred : it was through a change in
the public rather than in ourselves." And he then
goes on to say that there was nothing to write about
but O'Connell and the corn-laws. Domestic
feuds had dwindled into the corn question. The
audience fell away to nothing as the garrulity
of the speakers increased ; the public patience
languished as its abusers multiplied. Indeed,
nothing but corn-laws and O'Connell ! Why, Sir
Robert Peel last session announced, in the most ex-
plicit terms, that something must be done for Ireland.
That a new system of education must be adopted
which would include Catholics as well as Protestants,
and to suppose that this new system would not cost
so much as 26,0001., about which 30 much noise is
made, and make this an excuse for silence, is abso-
lutely puerile. But besides these topics, there were
others not less momentous to the party which looked
up to Blackwood as their guide. During the whole
session, which has now lasted three months, the Go-
vernment measures were so purely those of Cobden
and Hume, and Russell, and the various sections
classed under them as chiefs, that all the applause Sir
Robert Peel received came from the camp of the
enemy. Was it nothing to make a complete revolution
in the tariff, to take the duty off glass, reduce the
duty on sugar I.A. in the pound, and abolish the
customs duty on 400 articles, while Bankes and
Miles, and all the farmers' friends, prayed in vain for
the slightest favour ? Never since 1831 has there
been such a stirring session as the present, and never
did the old Tory party stand so aghast, yet Black-
wood says there was no strife of politics. That is a
lame excuse for silence, and perhaps it would have
been better for his character had he preserved it
longer, for such a lame, halting, pithless attack on
the Maynooth grant has not issued either from Co-
vent- garden or Exeter-hall. One of his reasons for
opposing this popish measure is of a peculiar character,
and only shows to what shifts a man is driven when
under the plea of consistency he refuses to listen to the
voice of reason. The dire hostility, so long maintained
in this country between Protestants and Catholics—
the bloody deeds that have disgraced British dominion
in Ireland—the " half-hanging and flame," he regards
as the greatest of blessings, toleration in religion as
the greatest curse, and attributes the inferiority of the
Continental States entirely to the harmony in which
Catholics and Protestants live with each other. We
give the principal reason for persecuting the Catholics
in his own language, as a genuine specimen of red-
hot Toryism in its golden age :
" It is a record of the political imbecility, it is to the
high disgrace, of the continental states, that with most
of them Catholics and Protestants could meet in this in- •
sipid harmony it was a harmony resembling the reli-
gious toleration of people—tolerant, because careless of
all religion. Had they, like ourselves, possessed a con-
stitution of slow growth, a representative system, a
popular mind, all stimulating to noble political feuds,—
in that ease they would have had high principles like
ourselves; they, like ourselves, would have faced the
action and re-action of endless contest ; and their po-
litical progress, like ours, would have been written on
every page of their history and legislation. It was
because they slept and snored for ages with no instincts
of fiery political life, that they were able, in modern
times—Catholics and Protestants—to fraternise in effe-
minate ruptures of maudlin sentimentality."

The other articles in the Number are of a more
amiable character ; among others we may mention
" The Cut of a Coat and the Good of a Gown," suited
to both sexes ; the continuation of " North's Speci-
mens of the British Critics," including Dryden and
Chaucer ; and " A Glance of the Peninsula," founded
on that excellent work, entitled " Revelations of
Spain." From the first of these articles we extract
the following genealogical pedigree of the_modern
frock coat :

" Our modern coats, those chefs-demure of Stulz and
Co., are to be traced back by their pedigree to about the
middle of the seventeenth century; while our paletots,
wrappers, or whatever else you like to call them, may
lay claim to a higher antiquity by three hundred years.
In the brilliant courts of Louis XIII., Philip IV., and
Charles 1., the costume had changed from the tight
jacket or vest of the sixteenth century, to the open and
somewhat neylige, though picturesque jerkin, so familiar
to the lovers of Rubens and Vandyke. Over the linen
integuments of his body, a gentleman in those days wore
only one upper permanent garment, the jerkin or vest in
question: the sleeves were loose and rather short; the
waist was not pinched in; the cut was rather straight;
the length extended only to the loins, and abundance of
fine linen and lace was displayed. Over this garment,
which was very plain, was worn a small cloak, more or
less ornamented, in the hall or the hunting field; but in
the tented camp, the cuirass vas buckled on, and the
jerkin appeared below, covering the tops of the cuissards
or thigh-pieces. There is many a charming Vandyke
portraying our ancestors in this elegant dress; and even
the furious fanaticism of the Cromwellian times allowed
the fashion to remain in England, till the taste of the
French Court underwent a change, and modified the
habiliments of nearly all civilized Europe. To what
cause we do not know, but probably to some degree of
additional comfort required by Louis XIV. and his
courtiers in their earlier campaigns—is to be ascribed
the lengthening of the skirts of the jerkin, and the
corresponding increase in the dimensions of the cloak,
which we find to have taken place soon after 1660. The
portraits of Mignard, and the battle-pieces of Vander-
meulen, all show us the change that was then going on
at the Court of Versailles : we find the form of the dress
stiffening, the sleeves lengthening, pockets either yawn-
ing wide, or covered under deep lapels, the cuffs turned
up half way to the elbow, and a glorious display of gold
lace and ribbons, that must have made a fine gentleman
of those palmy days glitter with the colours of the rain-
bow. To the easy and languid elegance of the Spanish
costume had succeeded a certain degree of military stiff-
ness and precision among the French beaux : all Europe
was at that time lost in admiration of the Grand Mo-
' narque and his brilliant Court ; and their fashions were
adopted as the universal rule of taste. It was the stiff
coat of Louis XIV. that was the direct progenitor of
two degenerate, yet widely differing, sons—the habit or
coat. and the frock or surtout of the present day. De-
generate descendants truly ! Who that ever saw the
rustling, heavy, and almost self-supporting coat of
Charles 11., could have imagined that the plain, close-
fitting, and supple frock, or the be-clipped and almost
evanescent habit pare of the nineteenth century, were to
spring from them as types ?"