THE " MOSAIC " RECORD.

lirOST of the London weekly papers published on Saturday

articles commenting upon the charge of Sir James Wilde in "Hopley v. Hopley." By an accident curiously unusual, as all who read many journals know, all these comments were in one direction, strongly condemnatory of the sentimental excuses

put forward by the judge on the respondent's behalf. A con- tributor to the Record reading all these, we trust not on Sunday, thought apparently that the Record also might as well improve the occasion, and prove that it did not at all events sympathise with this mode of converting babies into "perfect Christs." Being, how- ever, either too indolent, or too hurried, or too much afraid of strain- ing Sabbatarian principles, to write the article himself, he resolved, it would seem, to take one, and acting either on the Biblical com- mand to spoil the Egyptians, or the Pagan proverb " Fas est ab poste doceri," he selected of all journals in the world the Catholic Tablet and the Broad Church Spectator as the victims of pillage.

Taking some report of the facts which we fancy we recognize, but

-cannot retrace, he quietly appropriated everything original in the Tablet's article or our own, and then, perhaps finding dates and facts rather troublesome, also cut out the Tablet's summary. That journal had written, editorially, mind, not in any report :-

"Ho appeared as respondent in the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial causes, before the Judge Ordinary, Sir James Wilde, and a special jury, to conduct his own case against his wife's prayer for a judicial separa- tion from him on the ground of cruelty. Mr. Hopley pleaded a denial .of the charge, and that his wife had condoned his conduct. The trial was brought to a conclusion on Saturday last, the 16th. There were only nine jurymen instead of twelve, and they differed. It was then agreed between the parties that the verdict of the majority should be taken, upon which it turned out that the jury were all of opinion that Mr. Hopley had been guilty of cruelty, and that seven of the nine were of opinion that his cruelty had been condoned by Mrs. Hopley."

This is inserted entire (Monday 25th inst.) without acknowledg- ment, but with the prefix of the word " boldly," and with a minute change in the last line but one. The plagiarist may, however, plead that this summary being, though editorial, merely a summary,

was fair game, but the Tablet had hit on a very pat quotation :— "Since Canning wrote the parody on Martha Browning,-

"' Who whipped two female 'prentices to death, And hid them in the coal-hole; for her mind Framed schemes of sagest discipline,'" . . . .

there has been nothing like Sir James Wilde's euphuistic allusion to Mr. Hoploy's peccadillo for which he was sentenced to four years of penal servitude."

The Record takes this almost as it stands, though with a prefix :— " It has been truly remarked that since Canning wrote the parody on Martha Browning,

" Who whipped two female 'prentices to death And hid them in the coal-hole ; for her mind Framed schemes of sagest discipline,' there has been nothing like Sir James Wilde's euphemistic allusion to Mr. Hopley's peccadillo for which he was sentenced to four years of penal servitude."

The single change is from "euphuistic," a word which contains a sarcasm, as implying affectation, to " euphemistic," a word which

implies a deliberate intention of putting the case in the best way possible, a decided improvement, and one which shows the care and adroitness with which the plagiarist set about his task.

The next extract has been taken bodily. The Tablet wrote :- " On their return from their wedding trip, ho wrote down rules in a book containing minute directions about the management of the house- hold, the conduct of the petitioner, the bringing up of children, and other subjects. He said his object was to make her a model wife.' Day after day the unhappy young woman was forced to learn long lessons, and punished when she failed as a disobedient child. Sho was pregnant in January, and made a mistake in repeating a lesson, on which ho struck her a violent blow over the head, which seemed to stun her, saying she did it to annoy him. His acts of violence were more frequent than she could remember. In March she spelt a word wrongly, for which he struck her twice on the head, and she fell down ; she frequently had marks on her back and arms, caused by his violence, and occasionally he varied the treatment by kicking her in the back."

To prove the literalness of the extract we give the ipsissima verba of the Tablet, but the two lines italicized have been inserted into the plagiarism from the Tablet out of the Spectator.

"On their return from their wedding trip he wrote down rules in a book containing minute directions about the management of the house- hold, the conduct of the petitioner, the bringing up of children, and other subjects. He said his object was to make her a model wife.' These rules she had to learn and study every day. She was pregnant in January, and made a mistake in repreating a lesson, on which he struck her a violent blow over the head, which seemed to stun her, saying she did it to annoy him. His acts of violence were more frequent than she could remember. In March she spelt a worewrongly, for which he struck her twice on the head and she fell down ; she had frequently had marks on the back and arms caused by his violence, and occasionally he varied the treatment by kicking her in the back."

The next excerpt is even more characteristic. The Tablet, with that odd and, as it were, foreign cleverness which often distinguishes its articles, wrote immediately after our last extract :— " 'It was a prominent fact in the case,' said Sir James, ' that in 1860 the respondent committed some act which brought him within the grasp of the law.' [He only beat one of his pupils, the poor boy Canceller, to death. Tent pis pour Cancellor and very heavily,' continued Sir James, 'did the hand of the law fall on him ; and a man of education and refinement' (so refined as to collect a large amount of saliva in his mouth, and spit in his wife's face for beckoning her children in upon a cold snowy day), 'of great natural ability, and with a groat many noble though visionary aspirations, was taken from his home and imprisoned for three years.' " The appropriator smelt mischief, " Tant pis pour Cancellor I" The Record would never say anything so epigrammatic or so French as that little interjection, so he printed it thus :— " 'It was a prominent fact in the case,' said Sir James, that in 1860 the respondent committed some act which brought him within the grasp of the law' [He only beat one of his pupils, the poor boy Cancellor, to death]; and very heavily,' continued Sir James, ' did the hand of the law fall on him; and a man of education and refinement, of great natural ability, and a great many noble though visionary aspirations, was taken from his home and imprisoned for throe years," —leaving out the characteristic four words which gave point to the original.

We say nothing about the sentences extracted from the judgment, because they are common property, though it is a little odd that they begin and end in the Tablet and Record at the same points, but pass on to ourselves. Now, borrowing from the Tablet is one thing, and borrowing from the Spectator quite another. No reader of the Record was in the least likely to see the Tablet, but there are faint-hearted brethren who study the Record, yet read the Spectator to see what it is which our contemporary so greatly con- demns. Simple quotation from the Tablet was sufficient, but in our case a little water had to be poured into the interstices of the mosaic pattern. Some sort of apology, too, must be introduced to serve in case of observation, so the work was performed in this wise. We had said :— " An able man, vain, moody, and strong-tempered, with a will of iron, and the schoolmaster's resentment against resistance from below, he had pondered upon education until it had become the master idea of his life. Training could do anything, could modify all the conditions of human life, could, if commenced before birth, improve to an unde- fined degree the physical and mental structure of mankind. Give him but his own way and he would regenerate the human race, and until the world was converted he would practise his system upon every per- son who came into his power. His young wife was a peculiarly attrac- tive subject, for, like all educational monomaniacs, Mr. Hopley believed that the physical training of a child might almost commence with con-- ception."

This is watered in this way :—

"He seems soon to have abandoned this crotchet, but still he was a monomaniac on the subject of education. He is described as an able man, vain, moody, and strong-tempered, with an iron will, and a school- nnster's resentment against insubordination. Training, ho believed, could do anything, and, provided he was allowed to have his own way, he thought he could regenerate the world."

This, however, became tiresome, so, in the next passage the adapter coatsnted himself with simply drawing his pen through a few worts. We had written :-

" When the time arrived he refused her either midwife or doctor, the

first as uanecoasary and the latter as indelicate. Gipsies delivered themselves under a hedge,' and so should she, the secret idea being, we doubt not, that the children born were the stronger for the absence of medical help. It is curious, by the way, how rooted that notion of the expediency of roughing it' is in the world, observers who see that savages and gipsies are strong forgetting that it is only picked lives which survive the treatment. When the baby was born he forced on its mother certain rules of stickling, still as matter of education, and beat her it she neglected them, took her out in an open carriage five days after confinement, with the babe in a fish-basket,—we wonder it was not a manger,—beat the infant if it cried before it was a fortnight old, and went on educating the mother."

The Recor.l publishes this without prefix of any sort, as,-

" When the time arrived he refused her either midwife or doctor, the first as unnecessary and the latter as indelicate. Gipsies delivered themselves under a hedge,' and so should she, the secret idea being, no doubt, that the children born were the stronger for the absence of medical help." When the baby was born he forced on its mother cer- tain rules of suckling, still as matter of education, and beat her if she neglected them ; took her out in an open carriage five.days after con- finement with the babe in a fish-basket; beat the infant if it cried before it was a fortnight old ; and went on educating the mother, at whom he often threw books while she was learning or saying her lessons."

The sentences left out are the remark on " roughing it," of which the Record with its ideas of discipline could hardly approve. and the allusion to Mr. Hopley's notion that he could train a Christ, conveyed by the " manger."

We do not know that we are very greatly injured by the practice of which the Record has been guilty, not for the first time, and we are quite sure the Tablet is not. No Roman Catholic is likely to read the Record, and that is probably the idea on which the plagiarist relies for secrecy. It is not because we are injured or aggrieved, except indeed by the water poured into our wine, that we ask the Record whether, as the organ of a great and respectable ecclesiastical party, it intends to defend this conduct ? If it does, we shall have a new illustration of the old dogma, that men are fair only towards those they agree with ; if it does not, let it say so frankly. In either case it would perhaps be decent while pillaging the Tablet not to describe that journal as edited by " foreigners and Romanists who scoff at English notions of warm affections, &c." Its con- ductors are certaiely Romanists, and may for aught we know be foreigners and scoffers,—for we do not even know their names,— but still for the footpad to lampoon as well as plunder the passenger is a breach of the courtesy of the road.