THE

LITERARY MAGNET.

E

SOMETHING NEW.

I think the world's asleep now.—LEAR.

We shall certainly die of the spleen. We have read Doctor Buchan's Essay on Hypochondriacism, and find our case is hopeless. We are in the last stage of the blue-devils. We are not however, we have every reason to believe, positively dead; neither are we in the hopeless condition of some of our cotemporaries-asleep. Still we are in want of

something to arouse our dormant energies; we need some impulse to call into action our slumbering faculties; we are in want of something to give health and vigour to our diseased sensibilities; in two words, wè are in want of something new.

It has been said, that if the mind is allowed to lie fallow, even for a single day, it is sure to sprout into follies. We believe our author is Addison, but that is of little consequence, we have only to do with the fact. Now, for want of exercise, for want of some powerful excitation, our own mental powers are precisely in this desolate situation. Our energies are withered, and the spring-time of our imagination is gone. Alas! that a mind which was once (we blush as we confess it) full of the choicest blossoms, should become as dreary and full of weeds as a wilderness. To descend to plain unsophisticated terms, alas! that we should be soincorrigibly dull. There are,

This arises, as we said before, for want of something new. it must be owned, new poems, and new novels, in abundance; there are also a sufficient number of New Magazines; but these are of little interest. Then there is Medwin's book, which tells us a great many things that are -new; and there are the good people of the London Magazine, who tell us that their "poetry shall be-poetry;" that also is new. This declaration of theirs, reminds us of the gentleman, who hearing his coal-merchant say, during the high price of fuel, "coals are coals now;" replied, "that he was glad to hear it, for the last he received were nearly all slates." Then we have plenty of new schemes, new companies, and new adventurers; and the New London Bridge, the new tunnel, the new railway, and the new courts at Westminster; the new Lord Mayor, and the new Hammersmith ghost. But all these are far from sufficient to satisfy the cravings of our voracious appetite for novelty. We want something more important and spirit-stirring. We want things, as Jeremy Cockloft says they are in America, 66 on a large scale." There are now no battles of the Nile, no glorious victories, no long" lists of killed and wounded," to delight us. There are now no illuminations, save the solitary G. R.s, which decorate some chandler's shop on a royal birth-day; and no bonfires, save the funeral pile of Guy Faux on the fifth of November.

VOL. III.-PART XV.

B

ABROAD, every thing betokens peace; the grand Seignior is becoming more of a Christian; and good old Mrs. Ferdinand, less of a Turk. At home, we are all as gentle and innocent as lambs: these are no longer days of treason and conspiracy-even Mr. Ketch is in the Red Book. Oh! that these horribly dull times were at an end. We would, for a little while, be satisfied with a suicide or two-a new murder would be quite refreshing.

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"There's nothing new under the Sun," was never more true than at the present moment-we mean as far as our own wants are concerned. It is an axiom in the science of human misery, that the more enlarged a man's mind becomes, and the more it extends the sphere of its operations, the greater are the objects on which it fixes its attention. Just so is it with the man who leaves the humble scenes of some quiet village, for the bustle of a great city; he looks back upon his native hamlet with feelings of contempt he is accustomed to view things on a grand scale.” So is it with him who rises in society; he cannot behold his former acquaintances without the aid of a magnifying glass-his organs of vision have become adapted to persons 66 on a grand scale." So is it with ourselves: objects which once engaged our attention, are now passed unnoticed; circumstances which were once deemed worthy of our reflection, have now no ingress to our mind; the world has grown diminutive in the same ratio in which our own views have become enlarged. We are honest enough to confess, it may be on this principle that we declare ourselves to be in want of something new. There was a time, perhaps, when we might have found, in the simplicity of passing events, enough to occupy our attention; but we cannot, from our present elevation, look down upon such pigmy incidents.

There is a complete stagnation of circumstances. The vitality of the world is gone; and if it exhibits signs of reanimation, 'tis but to turn round once a day to look at the Sun, and then, like a confirmed sluggard, it quietly wraps itself again "in the blanket of the dark." Oh! 'tis a world that feels, at its inmost veins, the withering influence of time; but

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The mighty men, whose deeds shook the creation to its centre, have "mingled with forgotten dust." Those master-spirits of the age, whose very nod swayed wondering millions, have passed from before us, like the phantoms of a dream. They are all either bodily or spiritually dead. We have now no hundreds of thousands of men marching against other hun-, dreds of thousands of men-Buonaparte is in the grave. We have now no radicals, nor riotings-Mister Hunt is a blacking-merchant. We have now no wars, nor rumours of wars"-The Burmese are all killed, and the Ashantees have all run away. We are no longer in fear of having our throats cut in our beds-every body is most provokingly loyal. Chronicle is coquetting with the Courier-and Blackwood is exchanging. civilities with the London; whilst the Old Times has nothing to talk about, and half a dozen other papers continue to talk about nothing. Cobbett's gridiron is removed from the fire; and Alderman Atkins has taken the river Thames out of the Atlas Insurance office. The silly tattle of the Whig orators is at an end, and so is the "tottle" of their redoubtable champion.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

The

We are very confident that the elements of dissatisfaction are mingled profusely in our composition; we are abundantly gifted with the outward and visible signs of a sour disposition: our very visage is typical of our fretful temperament; instead of the natural genial current in a human body, our cold veins flow with vinegar; we are a personified growl. Such then is the temper of our mind, that we are ever dissatisfied with the things that be, and are continually craving after something new. Still, when we look around us, and mark the various passions and affections of our fellow-men, we are disposed to be content with our own peculiarities. Every man has his hobby." The antiquary delights in poring over an old manuscript, or a rusty coin; the poet sets his affections on skies and groves, and streams and flowers; the lover admires his mistress; some men love their wives; we are fond of-something new. Our Publisher, it is true, tells us that we have plenty of new subscribers-there is something in THAT however; and the Almanacks tell us this is the NEW YEAR -there is something in this too. A new year! well, we suppose our readers consider that we are bound to say something on the occasion.

We

We detest long speeches; we detest, as we think we have before shewn, old subjects of every kind; and, above all things, we detest cant. shall therefore abstain from moralizing our readers into a fit of the spleen, and forego the host of second-hand reflections with which we might announce the commencement of a New Year. Crabbed as we are, we will not say that the delightful feelings are gone with which we once hailed the present day.

"Gone! they ne'er go; when past they haunt us still." We behold, in imagination, the gladsome faces of our early friends, as they exchanged the customary salutation of this happy morning. We recall to our memory the smiles that once met us at such a season, and still meet thousands. We hear anew the merry peals that ushered forth our early years; and we behold the honest rustics of our native village, tripping, with joyful heart, in the gay morisco. But we are now wanderers from our home; and it is merely the echoes of those sounds which vibrate upon our ear, and the light of those smiles which- Out upon such trash! Give us a good "mouth-filling oath," and we will swear vengeance against every melancholy rascal in Christendom. What! shall we become pathetic in our old years?-shall we, "that ne'er did weep, now melt in woe.' Pshaw! bring us a cup of sack. Reader-thy health-and whilst thou hast at thy command a volume of the Magnet, may'st thou never, like us, commit the heresy of saying thou art in want of Something New.

J. H. H.

TO-MORROW.

WHERE art thou, beloved, To-morrow?
Whom young and old, and strong and weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,

Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,—

In thy place-ah! well-a-day!
We find the thing we fled-To-day.

ON M'ADAMIZING.

By the Author of the " HERMIT IN LONDON," the "HERMIT ABROAD,"
the "HERMIT IN THE COUNTRY," &c. &c.

Et jussas lapides sua post vestigia mittunt.-OVID.

WHENEVER I Consider the works of this justly celebrated son of Adam,* which have so contributed to mend our ways, my scholastic reminiscences present themselves to my imagination; and I indulge amid the flowers of fable which Ovid so profusely and tastefully spread over his path through life; which, however, was not free from dire vicissitudes, the ordinary portion of genius-may this not be the lot of our modern Colossus of Roads! Amongst the many vagaries of my favourite author, after giving his readers an account of chaos, and the organization of the world, the elements, the zones, the adorning of the firmament with stars, the four ages of gold, silver, brass (which soit dit en passant, seems to have returned again), and of iron; after the fictitious account of Jupiter's convocation of the gods, and an exquisite description of the via lactea,† or milky way (in plain English), he proceeds to the fabulous history of the giants, to the transgressions of mankind, then announces the deluge, and lastly, the "Homines e lapidibus procreati;" whereby we are informed that the post-deluvian generation was extracted from the hard inflexible substance, whether of silex, lime-stone, or common pebble, imports not; be that as it may, this is giving great honour and antiquity to geology; and we may, therefrom, yet cherish hopes of moving the heart of a stone. I will not follow the poet through his whimsical concetti of the males and females being brought into life, the former by the hand of Deucalion, and the latter by that of Pyrrha; nor account for the obduracy of times from this origin, proving our worldlies of to-day to be so on that account"Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum," &c. ; but merely confine myself to the subject, as far as it will serve to bestow the just meed of praise to our modern Deucalion, whose new creation has made" the rough places smooth," and has procured so many facilities and advantages to the town and country at large. Our ways are altered! and it was time they should be so; how were our ancestors bumped and jolted, agitated and contused, knocked about and stunned, by the rattling of carriages! how many more asperities did life present, and still does present, in those parts of the town where the gentle M'Adam is unknown! In the formal days of powder and pomatum, the beau and belle were often in nubibus from the concussion of their equipages against the rough pavement; whilst the delicate frames of sensitive females, of the aged and infirm, of convalescents and of effeminate coxcombs, were agonized on their road to an opera, a concert, or a ball; even now, the curling fluid scarcely preserves the glossy serpentine twistings and trimmings of natural or artificial tresses, unless her ladyship is driven over M'Adam's granite carpet ; whilst the dandy rival of Shock, the curly dog,‡ appears with locks as

* M'Adam, and Adam's Son, are synonymous terms.

↑ Nothing can be more sweetly expressed than the following lines:

Est via sublimis cœlo manifesta sereno,
Laetea nomen habet, candore nobilis ipso :
Hac iter est superis ad magni tecta Tonantis,
Regalemque domum.

There are curly dogs of divers descriptions---" A word to the wise."

lank as the tallow-chandler's sign, after a drive on the old pavement. What gratitude is due to Mr. M'Adam from these parties! The author and studious man, the composer of music, or of verses, even the writer of the tender perfumed billet doux, owe great obligations to our road-making genius; how easily the thundering of numerous vehicles will drive a deep reflection, a bright thought, a happy guess, and an impassioned idea, from the brain-how is the rounded period lost; on such an occasion, how the sweet shake is marred, the cadenza lost, the sostenuto drowned and murdered, by a jolt upon a rugged stone, which vibrates on the distracted ear! In cheerful conversation, half the good things of a punster, or of a tablewil, may be thrown away, or, the thread being cut by the clattering of wheels, be entirely disfigured, or made nonsense of; whilst the whisper of Philander may be quite inaudible in a populous street. Many accidents too were set down at the apothecary's and lucinian practitioner's door, which may be diminished, or made more easy, by Professor M'Adam. Nor are the inanimate beings less indebted to this gentleman, than the animated ones; the poor quadrupeds, who tramp the street for man's use and pleasure, will be on a less painful footing on the new pavement, than on the rounded or sharp surfaces, and the harsh inequalities, of the common paving stones; whilst that noble animal, the horse, will feel his poor shoulders and joints infinitely eased by the improved system of roadmaking. Lastly, economy is promoted by the diminished wear and tear of carriages ;-so that the man of money, and the man of mind, the noble and the trader, the sick and the vigorous, the lover and the lazy, livery-stable keeper and horse-dealer, coachman and modest cabriolet driver, man and beast, horse and foot, are all benefited by him who has meliorated their lot in the path of life; and I would vote for a granite column to honour him whilst living, and to bear testimony of his merit, when nothing but the remembrance of him may remain. Having said thus much in commendation of talent and industry, a well-meant remark, and disinterested piece of advice, can neither be out of place, nor offensive to the public, nor person concerned;-The M'Adamizing system has the advantages of appearance, use, and the favouring of the carrier and the carried, of rational beings, and of cattle; and if generally followed up, will give uniformity and grace to the streets; but care and attention ought immediately to be applied to the execution of the design; every thing ought to be weighed which can perfect its carrying into effect; in the operation of which, the weather is not the least object to be consulted; the M'Adamizing of the streets ought every where to be completed before the approach of the rainy season; at, and after that period, on the consistency, tenacity, firmness, and durability of the materials, depend its utility; if the work be done in inclement weather, it will fail, it will blow up, or, to speak more correctly, it will disunite, and come to nothing; or it will have to be recommenced, and the workmen of the old plan will raise a hue and cry against it, which will be borne out by its failure to a certain degree; if this be avoided, no doubt can exist that it will extend not only over the surface of British ground, but be received on the continent, and lay the corner-stone to Fame, and to a great fortune, which is the sincere wish of

A BROTHER MASON.