IN RE SNOOKS.
IF " the days of chivalry are gone," perhaps the heroic ages are returning ; at least we have not for a long time read, out of Homes', so much warlike denunciation and bloody defiance as in the co- lumns of the Miwning Chronicle this week, in the affair of I3nENT, SNOOKS, and Company. Pray God no bones be broken, no blood spilt ! There has been such a bubbling over of bravery, that had all the challenges been accepted that were given, we calculated there were not heaths enough round London to accommodate the parties. So infectious a fierceness never set people by the ears before. The fire began at Canterbury, but spread in a few days to London, enveloping in its progress the Senior United Service Club, the Horse Guards, and the Morning Chronicle Office, besides a vast number of private houses ; and is so far from being got under at the time of our writing, that it flares away day after day with undiminished, if not increasing force. it is a perfect civil war, grown out of a local broil. Our readers know the particulars. Six persons, calling them- selves officers, ride over a gentleman's grounds, committing tres- pass and damage ; and the gentleman orders them off: they are insolent and provoking ; and one of them, on the gentleman demanding his name, tells hint " Snooks," at the same time trying to ride over him. And here let us pause, as the moralist says, to remark how truth will unconsciously assert herself even under the garb of falsehood. This man, when he merely intended an imper- tinence, betrayed his real character : what he said was literally false, but morally true. " Snooks" is a name conventionally associated with the mob—it means a blackguard. This man, then, declared himself to be Snooks—and was Snooks. Like CINNA in the epi- gram—
" Rom. ANTIIONY Rsesroms, Capt.. 11th Light Dragoons.
Jonx HENRY Ilth Light Dragoons. Jouri WILLIAMS REYNOLDS. Licut., I I tit Light Dragoons. W. C. Foltacsr, Lieut., 11th Light Dragoons. J. W. Itsorinorom. Cornet. nth Light Dragoons. J. CUNNia011AM, Curvet, Ilth Light Dragoons." " SNOOKS videri volt, et cut SNOOKS."
The six marauders, being mounted, then make off, followed by the outraged gentleman ; from whom, however, they escape into their barracks, locking the gates after them. The outraged gentle- man is as unsuccessful in obtaining redress from their Command- ing-officer as from them ; and from the Horse Guards as from the Commanding-officer. At length my Lord CARDIGAN holds out redress in the shape of a horse-pistol, with which lie expresses his readiness to shoot the outraged gentleman, if that will be any re- lief. The outraged gentleman declines being shot yet, and keeps demanding the names of the six marauders. The Six still skulk, nameless and viewless,* behind the walls of their barracks, clinging to the coat-tails of' their Commanding-officer ; but somehow they find others to fight their battles, not merely in the field but in the press, whither now the cause is moved ; these literary friends of theirs selecting rather unfortunately as their cheval de bataille the subject of the anonymous, which they (nameless themselves) are very discontent that the enemies of the unknown Six should choose * The Six were at last dragged from their hiding-place, August 20th, after upwards of a fortnight's hue and cry after them. Here they are, as written down by themselves—to put respectable people of landed property on their guard. to preserve. The editor of the Morning Chronicle venturing to reproach him of the horse-pistol for having offered the outraged gentleman no better compensation, is himself invited to make one at Wimbledon. Meantime other collateral pistols are being cocked. There's " MILES "—a person so calling himself; this tre- mendous " fellow" (as he designates his own antagonists) writes letters, one a day, to the editor of the Chronicle, which the editor has the good-nature to put in, full of abuse of the outraged gentleman, (whom he too, if permitted, will sheet) ; letters apparently intended to " drive the gentleman," as Sir Toby Belch has it, " into a most hideous opinion of his rage, skill, fury, and impetuosity." MILES says he is " an officer of rank ;" which, if it is true, it was certainly very necessary for him to say, as no one, without entertaining a very despicable opi- nion of the manners, temper, and intellect of the class the writer thus claims to belong to, could possibly guess the fact front his letters. By saying lie is " an officer of rank," MILES wishes you to understand that he is a person worth shooting at. But this is a non sequitur. We do not admit that a man is any better worth laming because he has got an extra garter to his knee, or that his breast makes a more desirable target for one's lead for having a " lesser George" hanging to it by way of a bull's-eye. Let " officers of rank," who are so ready to swallow fire, know that, even considered in the light of' portable mud-banks for the recep- tion of leaden bullets, they are in no particular request ; while, in any other point of view, the country is becoming, by exhibitions of this kind, daily more incredulous of their capacity to be turned to any useful account. Some political economist once published a pamphlet with the title " A Plan to make Dukes Useful ; " but it is
much harder to find a way to render officers harmless. Our hope is in foreign wars, of which some scent to be getting ready as if on purpose to draught off the superfluous animation of the Snookses of the Eleventh Light Dragoons.
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