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1822.]

a week after this wark. fou as soon as whisky?

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And div ye no find that sangs maks a body

Odoherty. Yes-when they act kindly together, like Wellington and Blucher, I confess these affairs have an exhilarating scope and tendency.

Hogg. I wush Mr. Canning wad let down the tax on the sma' stells. A man like him should be aboon garrin' sae mony folk sip poishon night and morn.

North. I believe the Highlands have not yet been included in the Foreign Department; but Mr. Peel was here with the King, you know, and he must have tasted good Glenlivet himself, I should

suppose.

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Tickler. I beg leave to crave a bumper-Mr. Canning!

Omnes. Mr. Canning!!! !!! !!!

· North. Yes, indeed, Canning is the man to carry the country with him.

Hogg. Is it not a very grand thing to be set as he has been at the head of things, just as it were by a kind of an acclamation ?—no doubting, nor donnering;-every body just agreeing that he's the grandest statesman, and the maist glorious orator of the time.

North. I hope he will give himself the trouble to spend about three minutes apiece this Session upon little Grey Bennet, Lord Archibald Hamilton, and Jamie Abercrombie; for I'm really getting sick of these prosers.

Tickler. How despicable is Bennet's persecution of Theodore Hook. Lord! had Hook been a Whig, like Tom Moore, how little we should have heard of all this.

North. Why, to be sure, Hook and Moore stand precisely in the same situation--both of them clever men,-both of them wits,both of them sent out to manage Colonial matters,-both of them meeting with queerish underlings,--both of their underlings cutting their throats on detection-and then both of them deprived of their offices, and in arrear to the public, not through any purloining of their own, but through circumstances which every one must regret as much as themselves.

Tickler. Aye, but here stops the parallel. Mr. Moore is pitied by every body, and no Tory ever alluded, or will allude, to his misfortunes in the House; while Mr. Hook is, week after week, and year after year, made the subject of attack by all that contemptible fry of the Bennets, Humes, and so forth.

North. And you think he would have been in smoother water if he had been a Whig?

Tickler. I do. Only look at their protection and proné-ing of such a fellow as Borthwick,* a person who, according to his own story,

*One of the persons connected with the Beacon and Glasgow Sentinel newspapers, just then in very bad odor, in the law courts, from the number of libel suits against them.-M.

betrayed all manner of confidence, which he himself had solicited with all manner of solemnity, for the sake of a few paltry pounds, or rather for the sake of avoiding a day's work in THE JURY COURT -where, after all, he might probably have been let off for a shilling. Just think of a gentlemen like James Abercrombie taking up with such a creature-

North. And all in the silly and absurd hope of giving a little annoyance to the very people who ennobled his own family but (for which he would have been Nobody) about twenty years ago-no

more.

Tickler. Have you seen Alexander's pamphlet ?

North. Not yet-Is there any thing new in it?

Tickler. Why, after all, it turns out that the Lord Advocate's signature, which they make such a work about, was a FORGERY.

North. Very likely; I think that's not by any means the most heinous of all the tricks they've been guilty of. But who forged it? Tickler. Alexander does not say who, but he states the fact broadly.*

Odoherty. John Bull, who has eyes everywhere, ought to take it up.

North. Why, Bull seldom meddles with Scotch affairs; and, after all, the scent of that humbug has got cold as charity.

Tickler. By-the-by, what an absurd thing it is that there should not be something better here in Edinburgh in the shape of a Newspaper— Ballantyne's Journal is nothing.

North. Oh! 'tis very well for the theatricals, very well indeed; and now and then it contains good sensible business articles too; but whenever there comes any thing like a political question of importance, nobody can say, a priori, whether James Ballantyne is like to take the best possible view of the matter, or the worst possible one. He behaved like a very goose about the Manchester affair; and, upon the whole, 'tis an inconsistent concern-hot and cold is not the thing for me.

Odoherty. Stick it into the hero ;—but after all, he's the best.

Tickler Bad's the best; but, perhaps, Edinburgh is not a good place for a smart paper-too narrow and limited-people all eggshells-damned stupid people too—all taken up with their own little jokes, that are unintelligible when you pass Cramond Bridge.

Odoherty. THE BEACON, for example, what a lump of dulness it It seemed to me to be got up just for the private amusement of three or four spalpeens.

was!

*The pamphlet as entitled, "Letters to Sir J. Mackintosh, Knt. M. P. Explanatory of the whole circumstances which led to the robbery of the Glasgow Sentinel Office, to the Death of Sir Alexander Boswell, Bart: and the Trial [June 10, 1822] of Mr. James Stuart, younger, of Dunearn; and ultimately to the Animadversions of the Hon. James Abercromby, in the House of Coinmons, upon the conduct of the Right Hon. the Lord Advocate, and various individuals. By Robert Alexander, Editor of the Glasgow Sentinel."-M.

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Hogg. Puir callants, nae doubt they boud to hae their an bit 'cackle in a corner-let them abee.

Odoherty. Now what a proper name Beacon was. By the holy poker, a mangy mongrel could not have lifted his leg, in passing, without putting it out.

Tickler. A fine thing for the lawyers, however.
Odoherty (sings.)

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How worthy of trust!

You know black from white

You prefer wrong to right,

As you chance to be feed.

Leave musty reports,

And forsake the King's courts,

Where Dulness and Discord have set up their thrones;
Burn Salkeld and Ventris,

With all your damn'd entries.

Hark, away to the claret! a bumper, 'Squire Jones."

[An accident in the gas-pipes.

SEDERUNT

No. VII.-MARCH, 1823.

CHRISTOPHER NORTH, Esq., Chairman; TIMOTHY TICKLER, Esq., Croupier; MORGAN ODOHERTY, Esq., JAMES HOGG, Esq., &c., &c.

SCENE The Blue Room-the Table crowded with Bottles, Pitchers, Devils, Books, Pamphlets, &c.

TIME-One in the Morning.

Hogg (proloquitur.) It's just needless for you to was a real bad number. An binna my ain bit Napier,* there was naething worth speaking o'? about?

deny 't, mon; it paper on Captain What were ye a'

Odoherty. I was in quod-hang it, they say John Bunyan ană Sir Walter Raleigh wrote books there, but my spirits always sink. Hogg. And wha brought ye out?

Tickler. Poo! poo! he took the benefit of the cessio as usual. North. I'm sure if he would but exert himself, he need never be in any such scrapes; but I'm weary of speaking. Confound

Hogg (aside to the Adjutant.) Never heed, he'll mind you in his wull for a' that-his bark was aye waur than his bite.

Odoherty. N'importe! Here I am once more. I'll be cursed if I don't marry a dowager ere the next month is over. How well it will look "At her Ladyship's house, by special license, Morgan Odoherty, Esq., to Lady

יין

Tickler. "Do or die," is the word with you, it would appear. Well, you had better get a Highland garb without delay. Nothing to be done sans kilt now, sir. Even "legs and impudence" won't go down unless in puris.

Odoherty. Did you see Hogg the day of the Celtic cattle-show? I am told he looked nobly.

Tickler. Yes, indeed. Hogg makes a very fine savage. He was all over in a bristle with dirk, claymore, eagle's feather, tooth, whisker, pistol and powder-horn. His ears were erect, his eyebrow indignant, his hands were hairy, his hurdies were horrible, his tread

* This was entitled "The Honorable Captain Napier and Ettrick Forest," and was a notice of "Napier's Treatise on Practical Store-Farming, as applicable to the Mountainous Region of Ettrick Forest," &c. Truth to say, it was a strong puff of the Captain-the same who, when Lord Napier, died in China, in 1834.-M.

1823.]

BRODIE'S EXECUTION.

275

was terrific. I met him even where our merchants most do congre gate, at the Cross, and truly he had the crown of the causeway all to himself.

Odoherty. Had you your tail on, Clanhogg?

Hogg. Ye ill-tongued dyvour.* But what's the use o' argufying wi' the like o' you?-(Sings.)

Knees an' elbows, and a',
Elbows and knees, and a';
Here's to Donald Macdonald,

Stanes an' bullets, an' a'!

North. Ay, ay, Jemmy, that's the way to take it; but I'm sorry you thought it a bad Number. I should have supposed that its containing a touch of your own would have been enough to save it with you, at least, and the rest of the Ettrick lads.

Tickler. You deceive yourself, editor.

North. Nay, Tickler, I know what you mean. Upon my word, I shall insert that thing of yours very soon; don't be so very impatient.

Tickler. What, you old quiz! do you suppose I was angry at your omitting my little production? You may kick it behind the fire for what I care, I assure you of that, sir.

North. Not so fast, Timotheus; but what was your chief objection?

Tickler. That shocking, that atrocious lie, about Brodie-or rather, I should say, that bundle of lies.†

Odoherty. I wrote it. 'Ware candlesticks.

Hogg. Haud your haund there. Hoot, hoot, sirs; the present company are always excepted, ye ken.

Omnes. Agreed! Agreed!

Tickler. I disdain all personality, but that paragraph was full of shocking mis-statements. The fact is, I saw Brodie hanged, and he had no silver tube in his windpipe, and no flowered waistcoat on. It is true that he sent for a doctor to ask if there was any probability of escaping with life, but Degravers told him at once, sir, that he would as dead as Julius Cæsar;" these were the words. But Brodie would hold his own opinion; and nobody e'er threw down the pocket handkerchief more assured of resuscitation. Poor devil! he just spun round a few times, and then hung as quiet as you please, with his pigtail looking up to heaven.

be

* Dyvour―a debtor who cannot pay.-M.

† In Blackwood, for February, 1823, was a review of D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, in which, noticing the fact that the Earl of Morton died by the Maiden, which he introduced into Scotland, the critic affirmed that Deacon Brodie, who had been hanged (off a drop of his own invention) for robbing the Excise Office at Edinburgh, thirty years before, actually was executed with a silver tube in his windpipe,-but that all attempts to re-animate his body were fruitless. The reviewer said, "We have reason to say we know this, for we are old enough to have often talked with the surgeon who was present when the experiment was made."-M.

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