a tendency towards high calumny; and as the portrait painter copies the face with some approach to accuracy, but gives to his subject the hands, arms, and bust that please his fancy, so the most rigid storyteller is satisfied with the great outlines of truth, and fills up his accessories with an exclusive view to general effect. Further, as to the utility of calumny, it is a mere prejudice to think that it is “pleasant but wrong," and that it enters into the common category of vices, which are never practised for the sake of their consequences, but rather from the irresistible temptation of a temporary good. That calumny is odious to the victim we freely admit; but not more so than simple detraction. Nay, the law is so far right in its dislike to truth as an enemy to the king's peace, that its victim must writhe under an accusation of which he knows himself guilty, more than under one where he is conscious of innocence. Pudet hæc opprobria nobis et dici potuisse, says the poet; but he adds as a clincher, et non potuisse refelli. It is to no purpose that the calumniated reflects on what is so obvious,—namely, that he has nobody to thank for his position but himself, and that he receives only the just reward of his ill deeds, in the denunciations of the libeller: so far from alleviating the load he bears under detraction, the knowledge of his own lachesse only adds to the bitterness of the sensation, and to the intensity of the resentment: “had mine enemy done this—!” But the feelings of the victim form no part of the question. Worms do not like being impaled, as their wriggling indisputably declares; and we never heard a fish scream with delight at being dragged out of its element with a hook,-however much mankind may like being led by the nose. Society must have its scape-goats, its involuntary Quinti Curtii, and “these are of them.” But if we turn from the individual victim calumniated, to the interests of society at large, the merits of calumny are transcendent. It is not merely that whatever benefits can be bestowed upon the public by a simple detraction, must be much enlarged by calumny, as the more powerful agent: it is necessary also to look at the relation of supply and demand. For it is clear that detraction alone would not keep the market going; and that although most men know more evil of themselves than the world suspects, yet is this precisely a case in which the “scire tuum nihil est" applies to the uttermost extent. Men do not usually "wear their hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at ;" and de non apparentibus-we all know the conclusion. He, accordingly, who repeats only what he knows, comes soon to the end of his tether; so that detraction would soon be exhausted for want of its pabulum, if calumny did not step in to supply the deficiency. That it does so step in with most admired effect is so undeniably true, that certain periodical propagators of falsehood have found it convenient to refuse admission to the reclamations of the belied, as a practice far too troublesome to admit of toleration. Thus, then, have we proved, that calumny, no less than detraction, plays a serviceable part in the melodrama of society; and that, were either piece removed from its machinery, the consequences would be nearly fatal. There is one beneficial application, however, of evil speaking, common to both, which we have overlooked, and that relates to its influence on the nosce teipsum: there is no shorter and more royal road to that desirable attainment, than may be picked out of those little expressions of public opinion of our actions, which our friends and neighbours take such pains to propagate. In what indeed shall we find the baseness of flatterers and parasites but in the injurious tendency of their assentations? Pessimum inamicorum genus laudatores. It may be readily believed, that the worst of men, at the moment of receiving the benefits of hospitality and protection, must really feel some slight degree of pleasure in the fair things they utter of their benefactor, and in fact really believe some certain portion of the eulogies to which they give utterance. This, in its way, is a sort of gratitude, and pro tanto, is rather praiseworthy than matter of reproach. The real depravity of such men lies in the danger of their blandishments, in the perversion of conscience they contribute to develop in their hearer, by selfishly withholding that "piece of their mind," which, but for their corrupt motives, they, like others, would be so ready to utter, and which is of so healing and wholesome an efficacy, in making the party to whom it is addressed know himself. If the moral effect of praise be thus evil, the moral effect of blame cannot but be good. Either it is merited, or it is not in the former case, nothing is more likely to arrest the sinner in his vicious course; and in the latter, it at least provokes self-examination, abates the overweening tendency to self-confidence, and strengthens good resolutions to avoid in the future those things, which, true or false, are so painful in the reporting. If it be really wisdom to prefer the blame that is useful, to the praise which betrays, the quality of these expressions of opinion is definitively fixed and if, as Beaumarchais says, "little men alone dread little writings," there is nothing in libel which a good man should eschew. Indeed, the very law which punishes libel, by fixing the gravamen of the offence in its tendency to a breach of the peace, casts its stone rather against the touchy irritability of the calumniated, than against the dicacity of the offender. When the acrimony and vindictiveness with which the libeller is universally pursued, is brought into the account, it is impossible to doubt that something more would be urged against the crime than its incidental tendency, if there were really any thing inherently wrong in it to be advanced. If the parent then is justified in not sparing the rod to spoil the child, and if apothecaries' stuff is not eschewed when it is so abominably nasty, neither is detraction to be discredited merely because it gives a little pain. Let the public, accordingly, change its tone with regard to the practice. We do not say, let society indulge more in personalities, nor let calumny be bolder or more inventive; for that is impossible but let men cease to be ashamed of avowing what they are not ashamed to do. Let the decalogue be altered with the rubric, to correspond with the manners of the age, and its Christian morality. Let the prayer against lying and slandering be struck out of the litany and let no man set other bounds to his natural and innocent propensities in the particular, than those which are necessary to avert an action for damages, or an attack upon the nose. :-diximus. μα THE LUCKY BOUGH; OR, THE HOP-GARDENS OF KENT. BY EDMUND CARRINGTON, ESQ. For my part, I like your country superstitions. FIELDING. Sing hey! sing hoa! the beggars are come to town! THERE they are!-(Callot's beggars!-shake hands with your brothers!)-there they go! charivari! charivara, as Rabelais says. Waggon-loads of them! live lumber by the ton! ragmen, bagmen, magsmen, dogsmeat slicers and caterers for cats, gipsies, pedlars, tinkers, higglers, and hawkers of petty wares, oyster-bawlers, Billingsgates, costermongers, eggwives, orange-venders, the female fry of Whitechapel, the Minories, the Borough, St. Giles's, and Southwark, in all the motley of Rag-fair-its dingy lilac, primrose, buff, and green -old faded drawn-bonnets, tattered, lollopping Leghorns, pink gowns, yellow gowns, blue gowns, red gowns, scraps of riband, bobtails of old German velvet worn brown-the ghosts of heyday bravery; shawlsslatternly, slammaking, and soiled-tags of scarfs, old bands, old buckles, Swiss aprons at twenty-second hand, old soldiers' coats (the scarlet worn white) over a female boddice and green gingham petticoat there they are, the motley queans! there they are cheek by jowl with the ragamuffinry of their male comrades, pickpockets (for once setting out on an honest vocation, and to "pick"-not the pockets of her majesty's lieges, but something else, as we shall see by and by), members of the swell-mob worn seedy, with mustaches at a discount, topped with beavers without crowns, and shod with a boot on the off foot and a shoe on the near one,-bailmen out of jobs, ballad-bawlers, knife-grinders, mechanics "out o' work," the most unwashed of the "mighty unwashed," periwinkle-mongering-(a "pin for their winkles" now! even the pin they once picked the winkles out of the shell with ! what care they for winkle-mongering? they have better "fish to fry !") -cads of cab-drivers, knackers' men, resurrection scamps and surgeons' larder-providers, lean understrappers of broken-down pettifoggers, scriveners out of scribbling (or term) time,-livid-blue visaged, threadbare, out-at-elbow dogs! (a fox-tail is royal purple compared with their "foxy," seedy gear!) hangmen's satellites "quite done up" since "rope" has been less in fashion-the tatterdemalions! there they are worthy compeers of the ragged queans they "chum" with, and drink with, and "bundle" with into the waggons, vans, and carts, which bear them singing, bawling, can-clinking, squabbling, toping at every pothouse they come to, at the expense of their employers. Hereby then hangs a tale! Whither is all that cargo of ragamuffinry being exported, from the squalid, crowded haunts of the metropolis and its outskirts ?-that scum of the town and of the earth? When we speak thus of the groups we have pictured, it is not in scorn but solely in truth: nay! the spectacle they exhibit brings joy and contentment to our hearts to think that the very dregs and désœuvrés of the metropolis are all at once not only called to employment (the grand desideratum) but are held, yet more, in request for their services! In a word, throughout that garden of England-Kent, and the Weald of Kent especially, they are called forth now in the first week of September, on the pleasant and profitable errand of hop-picking, or, as it is familiarly called, "hopping." Reader, put yourself, at the season just specified, into a Dover railway carriage, be whirled down to the Tonbridge station, have horses ready outside the station gates, be whirled along to the town of Tonbridge, and then onwards along the road through Hadlow to Maidstone, and then making this spot your centre point, mount your prad, and lose yourself delightedly through those rich, luxuriant labyrinths where the hop-tendrils wave in thick clustering blossomed festoons over the heads of the motley "gatherers." A word here to your continental, and more particularly your Italian recollections" comparisons" we were going to say-though these are no less prejudiced and foolish sometimes as regards "things," than they are" odious" (according to the proverb) as regards "men." Though equally rich then, and sparkling in verdure, the scene before you is not, assuredly, so Arcadian as that which the valleys of Romania, of Pisa, and the Arno can show. You turn from the English vintage awhile (as the hop-gathering may be termed) to recall the festoons of vines, drooping in long luxuriant chain from elm-tree to elm-tree, and to call up, no doubt, to your fancy, all the dreams that a Nicolas Poussin might have delighted in-glades peopled with all sorts of Golden Age denizens-fauns, and goatfooted gentry, and nymphs that don't know how to look fretful-Silenuses lolling on tame tigers, and little saucy urchins straining their best to pluck down the tempting purple bunches overhead, which tantalizingly hang just out of reach, till some good humoured bacchanalian damsel, or some tall gentleman of a faun, picks a bunch and flings it down to them, and prevents their pronouncing the grapes sour !" 66 Short, however, of the classic charm of the vineyard, the peculiar and pictorial beauty afforded by the disposition of the sprays and branches festooned as they are in Italy, there is no growth of any plant cultivated for the health and blessing of man so beautiful and graceful as that of the hop-garden. The low, cut-down, currant-espalier style of the sloping French vineyards, fades into nothingness in point of beauty before the free and waving luxuriance of the hop tendril. No doubt, on the other hand, the peasant-groups along the banks of the Garonne afford specimens of rural grace, and set off the general effect of the scene in a manner, and with a charm, not to be looked for in the no less tatterdemalion than motley ranks which we have above portrayed, as constituting the group of London-hired hop-gatherers. Who can forget, too, the intervals of the French vintage hours, filled up with those happy dances, which characterizes at once the rustic pleasures of the light-hearted labourers, and give embellishment to the scene of their welcome toil? We fancy we hear the gladsome echoes (to which we have ere now listened), along the Garonne banks, of the dancers' laugh, mingled with the glee-notes of viol and horn, and chalu meau. July.-VOL. LXVIII. NO. CCLXXI. Y Happy are those peasants in their bright sky and smiling climate; still, let there be no invidious contrast aimed at here! Let no such un-English thought disfigure our friendly page! There is happiness, too, on those banks of Medway; in that rich lowland-the Weald of Kent! Though natural and social habits vary in different nations and under different skies (necessarily influenced as they are by diversity of climate), yet for once the chill menaces and caprice of English skies are forgotten, and English labourers are happy in active em ployment and adequate pay: and though there is, as yet, during the hop-gathering no intervening dance or festivity as with the French peasant-groups by the Garonne,-yet such festivities may yet greet Yes! the hop-harvest-home is still observed by many good old Kentish farmers: men worthy of the old times, and worthy of the boast of "men of Kent." us! But to the winding up of our hop-harvest we have not yet come. There is happiness of heart, we say, for the hop-gatherer; and though it bounds not (save now and then) to the sound of tabour and viol, it is tuned to a harmony no less welcome-the chink of good wages for honest toil! A mercy it is to think how many in that hop-garden before us are rescued from beggary, starvation, vagabondage, and crime! Crime the bitter offspring of want! Crime, too often, the child of necessity!—and no worse source ! But look at the merry ragamuffins! (they put us in mind of a set of Yankee "frolickers!") How their fingers wag away as if they had St. Vitus's dance in their knuckles! "Pickers" (though not "stealers" happily now), you may well call, with Hamlet, those fingers! Ay! many an additional pair of hands has been engaged by the hop-grower, in order to get in his crop as speedily as possible. The hands in his own neighbourhood are not sufficient-hence, the waggon-loads of live lumber already specified, which he is obliged "to import" at his own cost from the metropolis. So completely is the country scoured for procuring "hands" (it may here be observed), that all the cottages throughout the hop districts may be seen closed up during the "picking;" father, mother, brats, and all, are absent at the "muster."-"All are gone a hopping!" 66 If any man's eyes glisten with satisfaction at watching the quick movements of those glib fingers, they are the hop-grower's. The hop, volatile and evanescent in its nature, soon fades, soon turns foxy" and red, and loses its best aroma, unless picked speedily. A single night's tempestuous wind has been known to lessen the worth of a crop by nearly one-half, by spoiling the colour, and spoiling, too, the aroma and flavour, in consequence of the withering and bruising effect of the wind. Pick away then, my "jolly beggars !"-pick away, my hearties! For the succour of the English vintage (and so we may call it), wag finger and thumb glibly! Fancy yourselves thimblerigging, and fake away!" "Tom, how many bushel have you picked?" "Nine," says Tom. "Why, you haven't half-worked! I've 'tallied' fifteen!" Just here the "tallyman" comes up, and interrupts the colloquy, asking each gatherer as to the amount of his pickings, and giving to each respectively, a tally, with marks indicative of the number of |