FOR three years past have we been pining away for the appearance of a new Cockney. There cannot be a greater mistake in legislation than to scout the employment of machinery in inflicting torture on a criminal. Torture inflicted previous to conviction, and with a view to confession, with or without any complicated machinery, is in all cases, even Cockney ones, indefensible, alike on the ground of expediency, justice, and mercy. But the torture inflicted after convic tion, and without any view, either prospective or retrospective, to confes sion,-in all cases, especially Cockney ones, is, with or without any complicated machinery, defensible, alike on the ground of expediency, justice, and mercy. The knout! What a mul titude of associations are comprehended in that formidable monosyllable! To spare the pity of the Public, we gag the culprit in his agony, so that he may not groan at the expense of other people's humanity. The sight of the bare bleeding back, striped and starred like the American ensign, shocks the sensibility of the spectator, and he asks, what has been the culprit's crime? Cockneyism-aggravated by being habit and repute a Cockney

is the answer-and the benevolent querist is satisfied that the wounds should be healed by the sharpish application of searing and salt. The punishment is meted to the crime and as reformation, which is but one of the ends of punishment, is in such a case nearly hopeless, it does not seem to the said benevolent spectator a matter of much consequence whether the knouted live or die. Better, perhaps, on the whole, both for himself and the public, that he die. There is then one Cockney fewer in the countryand it is possible that his place may be supplied by a man.

Our hearts leaped within us at the name Thomas Hood, lauded as we saw it by many whose laus is shame. Our eyes waxed red with wrath, and we laid our hand on the knout, as it depended with blood-stained thong from a peg on the rack of the Sanctum. Thomas, too, instead of Robin, seemed

to us a shocking aggravation of guilt, in a person with the surname of Hood. On mutton instead of deer must Thomas Hood feed; and we swore to immolate him to the offended majesty of the shade of the glorious outlaw of merry Sherwood.

But what a bitter disappointment! Thomas Hood, so far from deserving to be knouted to death, or sent with his stripes into Siberian silence, turns

out to be a most admirable fellowquite of the right kidney—with a warm heart-a sound head-a humour quaint and original-a disposition amiable and facetious-a boon companion, worthy to be carried by proclamation or storm-an honorary member of the Nox-Ambrosial club.

It is a sad trial to an old friend to return the knout to its peg, innocent of Cockney blood, on an occasion when delusive hope had whispered into our ear assurance of its immediate gyrations. Never was a knout in a more flourishing condition. The handle is speckand-span new-its thong strengthened in the few places where it had been corroded with gore-and the edges (the flat is sufficiently sharp), rather thinnish through attrition, have undergone a thorough repair. Three stripes to a Hunt-four to a Hazlitt !— the Cockney is not who could sustain a dozen and live.

We do not deny, therefore, that we felt, at first, stron ly tempted to knout Mr Hood, in spite of his manifest manhood; but Christopher himself, who was smoking a cigar at the time in the Sanctum, called out lustily to us to lay aside our Whims and Oddities with forty original designs, and welcome, with a hearty shake of the hand, the Londoner to Edinburgh.

Such is our excessive ignorance, that to know it would itself be a very considerable stock of knowledge. Its extent, we confess, is owing partly to our natural incapacity, and partly to our local habitation, and partly, perhaps, to our very name. Of our natural incapacity, it would be unfeeling and indelicate in us to say much; but of our local habitation and our name, the more that is said the better. The

truth is, that this Scotland of ours is a most outlandish place. You might almost as well be the Man in the Moon at once, as live in Edinburgh. Devil the one thing that may be going on in the literary or beau-monde world, can you hear or see in this Metropolis, till all the rest of mankind have got sick of it, and it is as old as a thousand hills. We are too far North. How the Magazine continues to conduct itself, in the very midst of the universal ignorance of its editor and contributors, is an enigma which would have turned the tables on the Sphinx, and forced her to have recourse in despair to a solution of arsenic. Hundredsthousands-tens of thousands of books, well worthy, as we have been assured by competent judges in the southern regions of this island, of being read through and through-have been published in London during the last solar year-the very titles of which are no more known to us than the titles of the Ashantee aristocracy. The pastry-cooks, and the trunk-makers of England, are happy in their generation. In Scotland, their demand is greater than the supply-for Mr M'Culloch's works alone, multiplied though they be by four, five, or ten, do not suffice, and so far from occa sioning a glut, there is still, we understand, a demand for them in the Tart and Trunk markets; and the Economist has undertaken to furnish a supply of some thousand reams in the shape of a Dictionary of Political Economy, and of an edition of the works of Adam Smith. The Edinburgh Economist is worse than the landed gentlemen. He will have the monopoly of the rag-trade-and will oppose, tooth and nail, any attempt, on the part of the legislature, to admit into Scotland so much as a single ream of the commodity, even on a high protecting duty. In this his opposition to the principles and practice of Free Trade, who would believe that Mr M'Culloch is prime aider and abettor of the Monopolists? Yet such is the fact-so that he absolutely occasions to the consumers of rag the loss of a large sum, annually "destroyed en pure perte.”

Among other works deserving perusal, there is, we have been told, one by this very self-same precise and identical Mr Thomas Hood, entitled, The Progrces of Cant. It is, we are told

by the Globe and Traveller, "an amusing caricature, in which most of the watch-words of different sects and parties are personified with much effect and great impartiality. Occasionally there is something of hardness and stiffness in the execution; but in fertility, variety, and ingenuity of invention, it reminds one (and it is the highest praise that can be bestowed on such a work) of Hogarth.” Now, although the Globe and Traveller be a Whig print, and therefore, doubtless, full of all hatred and uncharitableness towards our dear Maga, she, sweettempered Tory, regards with a kind eye the Globe and Traveller, and wishes him a still wider circulation. His occasional criticisms are clever and acute-and what is better, just—as in this case we believe they are so, pray, Mr Hood, let us have the Progress of Cant in our next monthly parcel.

Mr Hood has taste, feeling, and genius. That being the case, we shall henceforth hold ourselves entitled to abuse him as often as we choose. Nothing so affronting to a grown-up man as the flummery of continual panegyric. What more absurd spectacle than that of a man standing in the first or even second position, with his hands in his breeches pockets, while one critical chum claws him on the back, and another chucks into his gaping mouth a pound of fresh, or perhaps salted butter? Yet such is a common spectacle now-a-days in the literary world. Each puny and petty authorlet is seen flying about from hedge-row to hedge-row, in weak and wavering flight, surrounded and followed by a crowd of silly editors, like a gowk by his titlings. They cram him with praise, till sometimes he absolutely is seen to puke; yet still the glutton holds up his insatiate orifice for more, till, finally, swallowing something poisonous-insect or berry-he gets very very sick indeed-is seized with a violent purging-saw ye ever such a spectre-dies, is laid out, buried, and forgotten. One of his palls writes perhaps an epitaph which gets into Albums, where, from the vagueness of the expression pervading it, it is sometimes supposed to be a dirge on that interesting domestic, the ass, or a de◄ scription of the Bonassus.

Maga has done more to curb the pride and vanity of authors, without depressing or extinguishing those very

useful principles in their nature, than all the other periodicals, from Westminster to Inverness. Poets, especially, find the greatest difficulty in knowing what to think of themselves-for one month they are represented as drinking no other liquid but hippocrene, and another as getting sorely fuddled on small-beer. They are not suffered to come to any permanent belief on the nature of their own inspiration. On the first of December, a bard, with Maga in his hand, looks into his glass, and lo! the fine figure and bright face of an Apollo. On the first of January, why the witch has transformed him into Punchinello! What manner of man he really and bona fide is, it is not possible for him to conclude from such very inconsistent and contradictory reflections, and he walks accordingly about the premises in much mental disquietude. Yet, in the long run, he cannot help feeling that he has found his own level, and that, after all his manifold metamorphoses, Maga has kindly suffered him to subside into his own natural dimensions, be it of poet or poet

aster.

Mr Hood's preface is one of the few good prefaces we have seen during the present century. It is illustrated by a very ingenious design-his own caput in a mortar, with a pestle stuck into the skull, somewhat after the fashion of Jack Thurtell's pistol into the skull of Wear. He is beating his own brains for subject-matter; and the placid expression of his eyes shows the confidence he reposes in the result. Mr Jeffrey is seriously of opinion that people do not think through the instrumentality of physical organs, so that whatever may be the use of brains, they do not enable lady or gentleman to write an article for Maga or the Edinburgh Review. Mr Jeffrey is thus pleased to assert, that in putting together his Observations on Phrenology, his brains took no active part-an assertion which we daresay Mr Combe would admit may be true, without absolutely overturning the science. Many well-authenticated stories have we read of people performing their parts in life with considerable reputation and success, after having been trepanned, and robbed of a portion of brain, that went to enrich some College Museum. But although it be true that people have talked plausibly enough on the com

mon topics, such as Greece, Shakspeare, the Corn Laws, Free Trade, Grimaldi, Buonaparte at St Helena, Steam, Rail-Roads, Joint-stock Companies, Lord Byron, and Blackwood, yet whenever you have pressed them up into a corner, and stuck them to the point, their almost total want of understanding has instantly been exposed, and they have not had so much as a single word to throw to a dog. Let no man, woman, or child, therefore, hope to have his, her, or its name, handed down to "posteriority," without the aid of some pretty considerable quantity of brains. The phrenologers do now and then utter more nonsense than ought to fall to the share of their sect; but in taking the brain as the basis of their system, they act judiciously; nor can we conceive how any metaphysical creed can be either formed or supported but by that organ. Mr Jeffrey is one of the last men in the world from whom we should have expected an attack on the public and private character of the Brain-for to what else, pray, has he owed his rise in life? But such is, ever has been, and always will be, man's ingratitude!

But here is Mr Hood's preface.

"In presenting his Whims and Oddities to the public, the author desires to say a few words, which he hopes will not swell into a Memoir.

"It happens to most persons, in occasional lively moments, to have their little chirping fancies and brain-crotchets, that skip out of the ordinary meadowland of the mind. The author has caught his, and clapped them up in paper and print, like grasshoppers in a cage. The judicious reader will look upon the trifling creatures accordingly, and not expect from them the flights of poetical winged horses.

"At a future time, the press may be troubled with some things of a more se

rious tone, and purpose, which the author has resolved upon publishing, in despite of the advice of certain critical friends. His forte, they are pleased to say, is decidedly humorous; but a gentleman cannot always be breathing his comic vein.

"It will be seen, from the illustrations of the present work, that the Inventor is no artist;-in fact, he was never 'meant to draw' any more than the tape-tied curtains mentioned by Mr Pope, Those who look at his designs, with Ovid's Love of Art, will therefore be

disappointed; his sketches are as rude and artless to other sketches, as Ingram's rustic manufacture to the polished chair. The designer is quite aware of their defects: but when Raphael has bestowed seven odd legs upon four Apostles, and Fuseli has stuck in a great goggle head without an owner;-when Michael Angelo has set on a foot the wrong way, and Hogarth has painted in defiance of all the laws of nature and perspective; he does hope that his own little enormities may be forgiven-that his

sketches may look interesting, like Lord Byron's Sleeper,-'with all their errors.' "Such as they are, the author resigns his pen-and-ink fancies to the public eye. He has more designs in the wood; and if the present sample should be relished, he will cut more, and come again, according to the proverb, with a new series."

Mr Hood's love for Miss Tree is well known; and he celebrates his fruitless passion for that delightful dryad in some pretty verses, and an ingenious wood-cut. As long as hope is alive, the heart of a man is oppressed with care; but when hope is dead and buried, then may the lover again be happy at bed and board. There cannot be a greater mistake than in talking tragically of despair. Despair is far from being a heart-wringing, hair-tearing passion. Despair sits down in an easy-chair, when such a luxury is at hand, and with swelling cushions beneath and around the sitting part, fixes on the ceiling, or it may be on the grate, a pair of eyes remarkable for nothing but a composure almost bordering on stupidity of expression. Despair sees everything in its real light, and what is so valuable as truth? Hope, it is allowed on all hands, is the greatest liar on the face of the earth; but despair is no bouncer spins no long yarn-draws no long bow-sticks to matter-of-fact-while any little embellishments or ornaments, in which she may choose to decorate her discourse, are ever chaste and simple, and accordant with the spirit by which she herself is animated. Despair makes no great figure at the head of her own table, when the dinnerparty is large and miscellaneous; for she does not excel in small talk-her laughter is often ill-timed-and she will occasionally devour the dish that happens to be before her, without

heeding her guests, who think her outré, or even downright ill-bred. But over a tumbler of twist, and in the shades of the cigarium, who, at a twohanded crack, is more eloquent than Despair? No long, involved, circumlocutory sentences, in which the listener gets giddy, as in a round-about at a fair. Every word, every tone, every motion, every look, every gesture tells. The most intensely interesting night we ever passed, was with a friend in a cell in Newgate. When Mr Cotton, the ordinary, looked in, by appointment, about six o'clock, 1, to find that it was only two hours A. M., we both started, my friend and

to the usual time of execution. We have met with many able men since that night, great conversationists,Coleridge, Macintosh, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Odoherty, and other table-talk men of the first magnitude; but they are mere ciphers to him of that cell. Their heavy wordiness,-laborious repetitions, their hemming, and hawing, and hammering,-heavens! what a contrast to the conciseness, the vigour, the terrible nakedness of a passion scorning every word that was not even Shakspearean. True, that that felon had well studied the elder dramatists, for he was a friend of our friend, Charles Lambe, who published the Specimens,-but his talk, during the whole night before his execution, had a raciness about it all, that would have hindered the most critical of critics from accusing it of imitation of Ford or Webster.-But we return to Mr Hood's wood-cut of Miss Tree.

A woodman has been cutting away at the trunk of a Tree, when suddenly it branches out into the figure of its living namesake, in the very attitude in which she has conquered so many hearts, when, with all her mild, meek, and modest charms, she uplifted her wreathy arms in obedience to the oft-repeated cry,-Encore!-encore!-encore! Away flies the biting axe, that has been inflicting such cruel wounds on the tender bark of her slight, slim, slender shins! The woodcutter flings himself into a posture of loving admiration of the matchless Tree! and too blest would he be to slumber all night long, and on, on, on, into meridian sunshine, beneath the fragrant and flowering branches all dropping with the honey-dew !—