The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-01 00:00:00

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

Most cockneys love, or fancy_
say, they love, the country,
We and all that belongs to it. fancy, because •
in seven cases out of ten, their notions of the pastoral •
are mere delusions, and terminate in disappointment.
Johnson has an entertaining essay on this subject in
the " Idler," wherein he reads a useful lesson to such
town-bred folks as may be smitten with a penchant
for the rural. The same theme is dextrously
handled in the Number before us, in an article on
" The Love of the Country," whose writer ob-
serves, " the mere desire of change causes many a
town-mouse to metamorphose himself for months into
a country mouse. This class provincialise themselves
for one half the year, merely because they have been
metropolitans for the other. They are fully as happy
in returning to town in February, as in returning to
the country in June. Their enjoyment of life, like
the amusement of dancing, consists entirely in
changing places. They have been so long in Harley-
street, that they must go down .to Hants ; and then
they remain so long in Hants, that they must go
back to Harley-street. Thus they swing between
town and country, like a pendulum, and if ever they
settle, it is in the suburbs."—lt seldom happens that a
cockney ever quits town to establish himself in the
country without cursing the hour he ventured upon
such an experiment. He takes a picturesque cottage,
Say, with a fine garden, and a meadow or two. Ere ,
long he finds that his cottage is damp, and overrun
with insects ; that his garden—notwithstanding he
digs, trims, and hoes it himself—grows everything
hut what it should grow ; and that his meadow is a
dead swindle, the soil being suited to nothing but
weeds and rank grass. If he ventures upon an after-
noon nap in his cool, shady summer-house, earwigs
creep into his ears, gnats sting him through his small-
clothes, and blue-bottles settle upon his nose. Town-
bred men should be slow of indulging in a pen
chant for the country, for it is an expensive
enjoyment, as much so, as when a sailor—no un-
common case, by the by—suddenly discovers, and
acts on the discovery, that he is a born genius for
farming. The " Barnabys in America" represents
this hopeful family floating on a full tide of success
in New Orleans. The Widow's promise to write a
book praising everything transatlantic, has en-
listed all classes in her favour. The slave-owners,
in particular, are enraptured; Mrs. Barnaby receives
invitations by the score ; and is every where lion-
ized as the great English genius. There is infinite
caricature in all this—for Jonathan i 3 no fool, what-
ever Mrs. Trollope may hint to the contrary ; still,
the extravagance is exceedingly diverting. The
" Elm Tree ' is a poem in Mr. Hood's serious
style. It is not devoid of fancy, and there are
thoughts in it of no ordinary character; but the
manner is too quaint, and the versification in places,
offends the ear by its ruggedness. In Air. Horace
Smith's " Short Rides in an Author's Omnibus,"
we find this sensible, aphoristic reflection—" We go
on, age after age, expatiating upon the certainty of
death, and the uncertainty of life, notwithstanding
all which, many of us live as if we were nevei to
die, while some there are who die, as if they were
never to live." "Reminiscences of a Medical Stu-
dent"—a series of papers evidently suggested by the
" Physician's Diary" of Blackwood describes the
tragic end of a man who, having made certain me-
chanical discoveries, which threw hundreds of work-
men out of employment by restricting the demand
for hands, was invited to a public dinner by the ma-
, rnfacturers of a nortl-::_)rn ~.11.en the follow-
,n. .
g-incalent took place :
1 In a certain district in the North of England, in tlia