ouse, is now hard at work
on "The Acts of the Apostles." Colonel SIBTHORP--after unceasing labour on
the part of Doctor CROLY--has managed to spell at least six of the hard
names in the first chapter of St. Matthew, and can now, with very slight
hesitation, declare who was the father of ZEBEDEE'S children!
"An universal Christian education!" Oh, reader! picture to yourself
London--for one day only--operated upon by the purest Christianity.
Consider the mundane interests of this tremendous metropolis directed by
Apostolic principles! Imagine the hypocrisy of respectability--the
conventional lie--the allowed ceremonial deceit--the tricks of trade--the
ten thousand scoundrel subterfuges by which the lowest dealers of this
world purchase Bank-stock and rear their own pine-apples--the common,
innocent iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been
bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the
week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for
the Sunday pew--consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by
the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing
and living, for one day only, by the sweet, sustaining truth of the
Gospel!
Had our page ten thousand times its amplitude, it would not contain the
briefest register of the changes of that day!
There is a scoundrel attorney, who for thirty years has become plethoric
on broken hearts. The scales of leprous villany have fallen from him; and
now, an incarnation of justice, he sits with open doors, to pour oil into
the wounds of the smitten--to make man embrace man as his brother--to
preach lovingkindness to all the world, and--without a fee--to chant the
praises of peace and amity.
_Crib_ the stockbroker meets _Horns_ a fellow-labourer in the same hempen
walk of life. _Crib_ offers to buy a little Spanish of _Horns_. "My dear
_Crib_," says _Horns_, "it is impossible; I can't sell; for I have just
received by a private hand from Cadiz, news that must send the stock down
to nothing. I am a Christian, my dear _Crib_," says _Horns_, "and as a
Christian, how could I sell you a certain loss?"
A mistaken, but well-meaning man, although a tailor, meets his debtor in
Bow-street. A slight quarrel ensues; whereupon, the debtor (to show that
the days of chivalry are _not_ gone) kicks his tailor into the gutter.
Does the tailor take the offender before Mr. JARDINE? By no means. The
ta
|