PATCLIIA—IN HONOUR OF EARL CARDIGAN.
Mime aci.Se, &a.
ENCOURAGED by the sympathy of Lord JOHN RUSSELL, Lord CAR.. DIGAN is determined that the vulgar inclination to carp at the amosements of a nobleman, so touchingly deprecated by the Co- lonial Secretary in the House of Commons, shall not interfere with his indulgence of his own moods and humours. As King JAMES sought to be a free king, Lord CARDIGAN seeks to be a free lord. The ingenious Commander of the Eleventh Hussars has invented a new kind of Divine service : "let us worship God," says he "by whipping to his praise the drunkard private Rogers." To Bishop Pnurorrs or Mr. Newman it may be left to decide whether this form is strictly consistent with the rubric. The noble Lord, deem- ing example better than precept, conceived the felicitous idea of illustrating a sermon on the evils of intemperance by this striking tableau vivant. The offence of private ROGERS was probably an aggravated one : he may have got drunk out of a black bottle. The race of playwrights must be extinct, or some ingenious Author, in emulation of him who dramatized the adventures of THURTELL and brought upon the stage the identical gig in which WEARE was whirled to the scene of hiromurder, might make a hit in the story of Lord CARDIGAN. A sleeping-scene, like that in Richard the Third, with the real Captain REYNOLDS, Captain HARVEY PHIPPS TUCKETT, and private ROGERS, surrounding the Earl's bed while he labours under a fit of the nightmare, would be most imposing. The adventures of the theatrical ALL PASHA scarcely rise in tragic interest by so skilfully graduated a scale as the incidents of the black bottle, the challenge rejected, the challenge given, the shooting, and the whipping. "Earl Car- digan' would be like the (Edipus Tyrannus, one of those awful tragedies in which the hero is precipitated from one startling and terrible act by a mysterious and irresistible impulse, of which he is not master. The hero is the only survivor of the old Teutonic Bersetkars who in their accesses of insane heroism rent asunder and trampled down whole battalions, and were impenetrable to mere human weapons. The laws which restrain and crush ordinary mortals rebound from his charmed person like hailstones. He is a modern Lycurgus seeking to revive the sacred rites which trained the Spartan boys to heroes by whipping them annually before the altar of Diana. He is a hero fit for the worship of Timbres CARLYLE ; Dot to be subjected to the same rules as ordinary mortals ; hated by the vulgar, who cannot comprehend his greatness ; appreciated and cherished by the great Whig and Tory statesmen ; and the especial care of the Horse Guards, as his prototype Achilles was of Minerva.
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