gy, I discard, together with the " Gorgons, Hydras, and Chimeras dire," as altogether fabulous; for none of the race were ever given to rebel, but are rather remarkable for an aversion to pugnacity, and a most drum-like propensity to be beaten, when they are compelled to wage involuntary war. Goliah of Gath was slain by a stripling; Og, King of Bashan, was overthrown by the Hebrews; Sampson, tall as he was, was outreached by a woman; the Giant Ferragus, although he was eighteen feet high, was knocked on the head by Orlando, the nephew of Charlemagne; Colbrand, the colossal Dane, was made to bite the dust by our own Guy of Warwick; Jack the Giant-killer's exploits are well known to all readers of authentic history; and, in short, we hardly ever meet with an ogre, ogress, or towering Fee-fa-fum, who does not suffer his, her, or its head to be cut off by some hop-o'my-thumb dwarf or duodecimo Dreadnought. Does not this incontestably establish the meek spirit of the folio editions of humanity, and prove that "suffering is the badge of all their tribe," that they have patiently endured a persecution which has pushed their whole race under ground? Patagonians above six feet high are no longer to be found, the Brobdignagians are extinct, Irish giants are becoming scarce-they have all followed the Mammoth and the Megatherium, and the Lilliputians are undisputed lords of the creation.

And now, not to travel any longer out of the record, pass we at once to Gog and Magog, whom I hold to be fashioned after some Roman, or Grecian, rather than any Danish or Saxon model, seeing that there is a graceful down-looking attitude about the head, worthy of Antinous himself, and that the costume approximates closely to the Roman. I am ready to throw down the gauntlet in defence of their symmetry and proportions against all oppugners, Christian, Jewish, or Mahometan. How should your correspondent, Mr. Editor, know the proper conformation of a giant of the Magogian dimensions? Was he ever one himself, or did he ever see one? Heu! nos homunculi! are we little mannikins, pigmies, Lilliputians, to set up our own puny forms as models for the Titans! What arrogance and conceit! The Ouran-outang might as well find fault with Apollo for not being made like himself. We laugh at the fable of the ape and her young one, and yet our vanity betrays us into the self-same delusion. I maintain that the figures of Gog and Magog, superhuman in their very nature, and therefore not amenable to the tailor-like 'admeasurements of men, are consistent, appropriate, and gigantical, showing a disdain of mortal rules, that irrefragably proves their autocratical independence and heroism. "It is great," says Shakspeare, "to have a giant's strength, but it is base to use it like a giant;" thus falling into the vulgar error of supposing that they are prone to violence and oppression. Let Gog and Magog confute both him and the correspondent of the New Monthly, (I beg pardon of the former for the association,) and all other maligners of the Titanian race. There have they stood, age after age, looking tranquillity, never stirring an inch, nor uttering a word, nor once wielding the weapons wherewith they are so fearfully armed. Their swords, like those of Harmodius and Aristogiton, should be entwined with wreaths of olive, to intimate that they are the preservers, not breakers, of the peace, Whom have they injured, whom attacked, whom put in bodily fear? Who has brought an action of assault and battery against them? Who

ever saw them leap from their pedestals on a Lord Mayor's day, and run a-muck at the Mayor and Corporation? Conceive what horrors they might have perpetrated, what dropsical stomachs they might have tapped with their long lances, what apoplectic and plethoric throats they might have severed with their swords, had they become intoxicated with the fumes of wine and viands, and committed that Lapithean outrage to which I have ventured tremblingly to allude! Let us be duly grateful for their forbearance. They have worn daggers, but used none; they have preserved the same placid and imperturbable expression of countenance, when the myriad faces that surrounded them have all been distorted with rage. "Their delights were dolphin-like, and showed themselves above the elements they moved in." The "tantæne cœlestibus iræ" would not apply to them; for, whatever divinities they may represent, they know not the touch of anger. Like sun-dials, their faces register "nil nisi serenas horas."

And if they must be removed and expelled the City, as your Correspondent so flippantly recommends, by what process are they to be dislodged? What officer will serve a writ of ejectment upon them? and will the City Marshal, even with his sword by his side, the Lord Mayor's warrant in his hand, and a bottle of valour in his head, venture to beard them upon their brackets? Is Gog, like a great wooden doll, to be dandled and fondled, or kicked and cuffed, at the caprice of its civic mistress? or is Magog a mighty Punch, that Lignum vitæ Roscius, who may be cudgelled ad libitum and with impunity, unless the cackling of the mannikin's bubble-and-squeak voice may be deemed a punishment of his assailant? It may be easy to pass a decree for their dethronement; but once more, I ask, who is to bell the cat? The first workman that picks at them with his iron crow may be assured that they will have a monstrous crow to pick with him in return. They will not be quietly knocked down by the hammer, like an auctioneer's lot, nor collared by a rascal beadle, nor be bound with cords as Gulliver was by the Lilliputians, without making some fearful effort to shake off their pigmy assailants, "like dew drops from the lion's mane." How, if in their just indignation, finding their long-suppressed voices, they utter a terrific shout, "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war," tear their swords from their scabbards, leap down into the shaking and loud-echoing hall, and make minced-meat of the Mayor and Corporation! How, if each, like another Sampson, puts his hand upon the wall and buries himself, together with his Philistine persecutors, in the ruins of the building! Are these tremendous hazards to be wantonly encountered? Never was it less necessary than at the present time, when the citizens need not bid the giants fly from them, since they themselves have voluntarily fled from the giants. Who dwells within their purlieus, or "even within the verge of Temple-Bar?" Alas! the descendants of William Walworth no longer inhabit the street which he has immortalised. All have deserted their palladium-fled from the civic Lares and Penates, and sought out new abodes amid the terra incognita of Russell and Torrington Squares.

Thus pensively and profoundly was I meditating, seated, one evening, upon a stone bench in Guildhall, when, as the gathering gloom invested the solemn faces of Gog and Magog, rendering them mysteriously dim and indistinct, methought I saw them slowly shut their eyes,

nod their heads, fall asleep, and actually begin to snore. Never did I hear any thing more sonorously grand and awful than that portentous inbreathing of Gog and Magog, resounding through the Gothic vastness of Guildhall; but behold! how omnipotent is the dreaining imagination! I myself had been dozing; the sound of my own nose, transferred by a metonymy of the fancy to the nostrils of those wooden idols, had become, as it were, the living apotheosis of a snore, which had subdued me by its sublimity. Most fortunate was it that I awoke; for, on attentively inspecting the faces of the figures, I saw them working and writhing with all the contortions of the Pythoness or the Sibyl, labouring in the very throes of inspiration, struggling with the advent of the prophetical afflatus. At length their lips parted, when, in a low, solemn voice, that thrilled through the dark, deserted, and silent hall, they poured forth alternately the following vaticinal strain, each starting and trembling as he concluded :

"From Bank, Change, Mansion-house, Guildhall,
Throgmorton, and Threadneedle,
From London-stone, and London-wall,
When City housewives wheedle

To Brunswick, Russell, Bedford Squares,
And Portland-place, their spouses,

Anxious to give themselves great airs
Of fashion in great houses,

Then Gog shall start, and Magog shall
Tremble upon
his pedestal."

"When merchant, banker, broker, shake
In Crockford's club their elbow,
And for St. James's clock forsake
The chiming of thy bell, Bow;

When Batson's, Garraway's, and John's,
At night show empty boxes,

While cits are playing dice with dons,
Or ogling opera doxies;

Then Gog shall start, and Magog shall
Tremble upon his pedestal."

"When City dames give routs and reels,
And ape high-titled prancers,
When City misses dance quadrilles,
Or waltz with whisker'd Lancers;
When City gold is quickly spent
In trinkets, feasts, and raiment,

And none suspend their merriment
Until they all stop payment,

Then Gog shall start, and Magog shall
Tremble upon his pedestal."

I was reflecting what dire calamities would fall upon the doomed City, since the era of luxury, corruption, and desertion thus denounced had now manifestly arrived, and Gog and Magog were actually starting and trembling upon their pedestals, when the hall-keeper, shaking me by the shoulder, exclaimed-"Come, Sir, you musn't be sleeping here all night! Bundle out if you please, for I am just a going to shut the great gates."

H.

TABLE-TALK ABROAD.—NO. V.

The Court of Common Pleas.

"IN those days the Judges of the Common Pleas were Mansfield, Chambré, Rooke, and Heath, all able men and excellent judges. Sir James Mansfield had succeeded to the present Earl of Eldon, on the advancement of the latter to the woolsack; and it really resembled the overtaking of Eternity by Time, for the one was decisive in the same ratio the other was disposed to pause and hesitate. With a proper confidence in his powers, Mansfield justified his nomination to the Bench by a zealous discharge of his duty, and his appearance and manner there I thought equally imposing, and as eminently adapted to the high station he occupied. His silvery and projecting eyebrows, rivalling the snowy whiteness of his wig, gave him a venerable air, and would have announced no ordinary length of years had not his bold and ruddy countenance, the energy and emphasis of his gesture, combined with a firm and somewhat harsh tone of voice, given evidence that the infirmities of age had as yet been sparing in their inroads on his constitution, while his addresses from the Bench no less testified the integrity of his moral faculties, and the very fact of his being enabled to keep the Serjeants themselves in something like decent order, (the brotherhood was certainly composed of milder elements than they are now -they were neither presuming nor exuberantly vivacious) bespoke in him the possession of vigour of purpose and execution which none of his successors (save Gifford, during the short period he presided over the rebel coifs,) have apparently been enabled to attain. Best has equal spirit, but less dignity; there is too much of the 'Sono anch' io Fratello* in his composition; he identifies himself on and off the Bench with the Hermandad;† and, when disposed, he finds his powers insufficient to bend, much less to break the bundle of sticks. Then, it is said, (I know not with what truth,) that there is a Tu Brute inclination at times in some one or other of his colleagues, to encourage mutiny and insurgency against the sovereign will be it as it may, there now exists but one specific for supererogatory excitement, and, as a ring is the very first thing they resort to as Serjeants, let that which has been termed 'an Art of Peace,' be at once and finally resorted to as the only remedy. To return to Sir James Mansfield.-Shortly after his elevation, he was offered a peerage by Government; but, although there were those attached to him to whose advancement he was naturally not indifferent, could it have been legitimately obtained, and to whose interests he was any thing but callous, he was induced to decline the proffered honour. Off the Bench he showed himself a fine, hale, hearty old man; and when he put on his buckskins and other Nimrod attributes of dress, verily he might have been taken for some ancient and longpractised huntsman, for he was powerful of make, strong of limb, of active habits, bluff, bold, and somewhat uncourteous when he would. Lord Kenyon used to eye his Prestons with ineffable contempt, as he reflected upon the improvidency of his brother judge; and regard his own interminable doeskins, on which age had bestowed a hue scarcely less sombre than the silken robe that hid them, and to which

long rubbing (a practice he had when he charged the Jury) gave a gloss that any polisher of mahogany might have envied.

"It was, as I remember, on a fine summer morning, (if such a thing be amongst the other fine things of London,) that returning to town through the fields north of the metropolis, at an unusually early hour, I observed before me one whose strange movements and unaccountable gestures led me at first to the belief of his being deranged; for as, with form as upright as Lord Tenterden's conduct, he paced nervously and manfully along, he threw aloft as he went a ponderous cudgel, which, having performed the requisite number of evolutions in upper air, was caught in his powerful grasp as it fell, and again expedited on high, with as much energy as it was caught in its descent, with ease. Long he pursued this violent exercise, with a degree of perseverance and exertion that would have exhausted a round dozen of the dandies of this day, and, while he thus gave play to his muscles, trod lightly and firmly his figure was, as I said, strong and not inelegant; he was habited in black, and with the utmost care and neatness, and my curiosity was awakened to ascertain who might be this matinal athlete. As I approached him, he turned suddenly without discontinuing his gymnastics, or evincing the slightest embarrassment at being observed; and to my low and reverent courtesy, the cudgelplaying Chief Justice removed his beaver and replaced it, while yet his far-sent Djerrid was somersetting above, and, clutching it again, pursued his homeward course to breakfast, and then to law. I am morally certain that he often wished in Court that he had but that vivacious shilelah in his grasp when as some brother in a moment of brief excitement I know not how it is, but no sooner has some dull, longplodding jurisconsult, by the especial compassion of the Chancellor for his age or infirmities, been vested with the coif, than all his homelier and quiescent ideas become active, deranged, and unsettled; and the black patch on his wig has the immediate effect of a blister on the head, without the beneficial results of that vesicatory application in regard to the fever of the brain. There may be some secret with the craft or brotherhood; but the comparison is unfair, as there is no unanimity in their association; it is rather a Carbonari meeting, where all are cousins and all cozening, where their language and manners are scarcely less common than their pleas. Sir James was learned as a lawyer, and a sound Judge, with some trifling bias, it may be (haply to himself unknown) towards the 'powers that be;' his feelings were warm and readily excited, but without irritability, although his voice and manner might often induce the idea that his passions had been effectually aroused. I never beheld him more earnest and energetic than on occasion of charging the Jury in an action tried before him between the late John Kemble, as proprietor of Covent-garden Theatre, and Henry Clifford the barrister, when the merits of the celebrated O. P. Row came under discussion, and Clifford stood the advocate of popular rights (more fitly termed popular wrongs), as the tragedian the defender of his interests and property. The opinion of the Chief-Justice was warmly and decidedly expressed in favour of the latter, and in prejudice of the honest counsellor,' and his exposition of the law of the case was so forcibly opposed to the legality of the proceedings of the Pitt party, that, relying upon its effect on the twelve