EGLINTOUN PATENT EMASCULATED MOI'STICK MIDDLE AGE RECOVERY SOCIETY.
Tins " tournament" has proved such a comical as well as unlucky piece of business—has been so roared at, and so rained on—so pinflilly handled by gods and men—that we can hardly find it in our hearts to subjoin any thing provoking about it. The account given of the cavalcade going to the lists on Wednesday, the first day of the proceedings, will long remain one of the most heart- rending narratives in the English language. They went by water. " Shower succeeded shower," says a respectable and soaked witness, " each heavier and of longer continuance than its prede. cessor ; and the boundless expanse of heads at length permanently disappeared under a coextensive canopy of umbrellas."
" At three o'clock," we learn from the same dripping authority, " a perfect deluge of rain was descending ;" and the procession about this time " was seen advancing to the astonishment of every. body."
It is highly interesting, by the way, to remark the difference between the English and the Scotch reporters in the tone of their remarks on this affair of the wet. While the former, born to drier circumstances, fret and chafe themselves into all manner of horrid frames of mind, taking every minute savager views of things in cols sequence, the latter—wet from childhood—are able to maintain thee habitual equanimity, suffering no adhering nankeens to distort the judgment, no saturated under-linens to betray them into hasty re. marks. Thus the reporter for the London Chronicle, who hose° doubt caught his death of cold, instead of taking James's pow• dens, puts himself into almost as good a perspiration by there. hemence with which he Nis out with the whole of his expedition; and the Poxes correspondent, who seems rather of the sarcastic order of writers, takes the seine revenge in another shape, when he drowningly remarks—" It does not always rain in Ayrshire, they say, for sometimes it snows. Murphy could hardly fail to make out an accurate programme of the weather for this part of the country, and would only be puzzled in fixing the seven fine days which it is reckoned occur in the course of the year." But the Scotelunen, equally wet in their flannels, are calmer in their minds, and receive the contents of their native skies in their laps meekly. One, with a mixture of religious seriousness and me bitted endurance of water, alike characteristic of his country, me proves his cold into a text for pious reflections. "The result," says the moist moralist, " showed that causes to which all human intentions and actions sink into abject significance, had alone, for a time, clouded [well said] the expec• talons of the MISS." 'Phis," as Sir Hugh Evans says, "is a fery discretion answer ; save, the ha is in the ort to," which sins agains syntax. " His meanings is goot." Many hard words and cutting reflections have been applied to the knights and their performances ; more, we think, than were fairly proportioned to their deserts, considering the severity of the pums • went already sustained. The business generally, according t me witness, was " a magnificent abortion :" another gathers theo re pular opinion," which he states to have been, " that a greater Piece of humbug was never yet practised in the open air.' Much el eeption has been taken to the " lances ;" which are a sort of mop- sticks, such as servant-girls twirl of a morning before the house- doors, but differing from that weapon in respect of being made weaker and in such a manner as to snap in the middle, and being over" rounded off at the end." They were, says one account, :I:et across the grain ;" and another describes atem as " cunningly enfeebled." All accounts appear to agree in making them out a sort of emosculiesd mopstichs. To see some dozen people break emasculated. mopsticks, there font came wonderers om G America, doubters from Germany, specula- tors from France—not uninvited. In what humour the nations hare got home again, we can scarce trust ourselves to inquire. If they stir up no wars against us for this, we may be thanklid. Only conceive! people coining three thousand miles across the setts to see they know not what—but something, they are assured, the most epteal, most heroical, most fearful yet beautiful ever seen or ever to be seen in this life ! There may be occasions in which money ceases to be an object—in which even the most regular man of business, even a Yankee merchant, may be justified in discarding the usual rules of prudence and economy, to seize on delights that can never again recur. This was such an occasion—an occasion "to draw three souls out of one weaver," and even more than three (say three hundred) rix-dollars out of the pocket of one cotton- broker. They come! From all parts, " the cry is still they conic !" Wednesday, too, comes ; Wednesday—day of days, ever to be memorable in their after lives as that on which all ;heir previous notions of the sublime and beautiful, of the terrors of mortal com- bat and the limits of human bravery, were exceeded, and a new and nobler standard established in their stead—a day due to poetry, admiration, and enjoyment. Ileigho, for the sequel! " Motions, an taceam ?" With Wednesday comes Wednesday's sky, that de- clares against chivalry. "The windows of heaven are opened." Down come the indiscriminate divine slops—up goes the " King of the Tournament's" brown silk umbrella—into a coach scuffles " the Queen of Love and Beauty." Chop-fallen is chivalry. Plumes refuse to " dance," banners won't " wave," flags are flagging; there is no glittering of helmets, no " glancing in the sun," no per- suading barbs to "swallow the earth" to-day ; no dying gladiators "biting the dust "—no dust to bite! Alas, alas! Harpers arc mute, jesters are sail, " fools" look wise, and knights look foolish. Mr. MIAs "of the London stage" sports in vain his cap and bells ; he has no humour in him, but much humidity. The middle ages won't return—that is decreed. What should they return for? To see themselves burlesqued ? To see this sort of his- torical "high life below stairs?" To see the desecration of their old iron ? To see the collision of emasculated ntopstieks ?
Besides, may Lord EmaxToust, my good lord of the mopstieks,
and my most noble and much splashed master, Waterproof WATER- FORD, may it please your ignorances, there is another procession, or "precession," as it is called, besides yours—to wit, the " precession of the equinoxes," (call at Birmingham, coining home, and ask the doctors what it means.) Now by this other procession, or preces- sion, it comes to pass, that while your middle-age England had middle-age suns to walk and tilt in, we—in this scar and yellow time of the world's life—have unfortunately got a shove to the North —a cruel poke upwards, not with a pole but to a pole—which leaves U3 only the name of England, but saddles us with the natural debts of Norway, payahls in lengthened winters and dwindled summers, and all the liabilities of a bleaker latitude. Even this, please your ignorances, is not to go for nothing, and the soused chivalry of the 28th ult. should make a note of it : it may tend, with other things, to do away with much of the mystification which, no doubt, at pre- sent hangs over their minds, when they try to no purpose to satisfy themselves how it is that, do what they will—though they furbish up all the old armour, and emasculate ever such mopsticks—still somehow they do not and cannot get back the middle ages. This is how it is. This at least is one physical reason ;—of moral rea- sons, much less of political reasons, of course we say northing to tilting hereditary legislators ; or else we believe we could tell diem something to the purpose about the incompatible nature of middle ages and middle vlaxses with other edifying matter of' the same kind. But astronomy is bard enough for them—philosophy, we are sure, would be quite out of the question. No waving of mopsticks, then, will charm beck the middle ages, or prevail on the sun to stand still—to say nothing of the human mind; and chivalry is only disentombed fOr a day to be consigned immediately to another grave—a tottery grave. The knights, if they ever try a second tourney, had better abandon the idea of "lances)" even mopstick ones, and in future, like the Yankee squad described by MAninws, " charge umbrellas !" Or it' they insist on mopsticks, let these be properly furnished, and let the knights turn them to their legitimate use by mopping up the rain
and keeping the grounds dry for the ladies ; so that at least "the Queen of Love" need not seek her realms in pattens, nor the " King of the Tournament " come to the joust in, as STERNE has it, "all the majesty of mud." If they do nothing more than this, they shall be held the gentler knights. It is no mean art, that twirling of the mop ; it is quite a mistake to suppose it is easy. It requires strength of arm, and withal a
particular knack, nut readily acquired. We would not disparage the modern chivalry for the world, but, upon our conscience, it is not clear but the servant-girls perform the better feat. Their mop- Ricks, observe, are the masculine sort—made not to break—stout, strait-grained, veritable mopsticks, and no mistake. These they )save to balance on their bare and beautiful arms— and then that twirl, who shall describe it ? No hands impart the stroke, no fingers control the action, all is worked by the muscles of those fair arms ; yet away goes the mop with the energy of a water-wheel, whizzing round in invisible revolutions, and casting on every side a showery spray that glistens in the morning sun—a mimic rainbow. Pshaw! there's more poetry in Mollydusta's mop than in a modem tourney, set aside the merit of the manoeuvre.
A few weeks ago we noticed at one of the Police-offices, the ease of a lunatic!, a young man who laboured under a species of mono- mania highly fantastical, though less diverting than what we have since become acquainted with. lie had been mad ever since Michaelmas-day, on which (Thy he inadvertently tailed to cat of a goose that was brought to his fitter's table. This omission oc- curred to him afterwards as unlucky: to cat goose on Michaelmas- day, he considered something operative to human happiness—not to eat goose, a cisconistance replete with danger. On this hint he went mad—which was perhaps not far to go; and his crotchet was, that if he could roll back the world lie should in that manner get hold again of the 29th of September, and then by instantly ordering a goose and promptly dining, all would once inure go well; lastly, it was his belief that thus to roll back the world, though difficult, was not inipos::ible, requiring only the assistance of several strong men, whose cooperation he there and then earnestly bespoke. This case, reported at full length in the papers a few weeks since, is a sufficiently close parallel to the one under consideration to render it unnecessary for us to point out its several points of analogy ; even the goose, sought to be recovered, is not without its significance. And so we bid farewell fbr the present to time Eglintoun Patent Emasculated Mopstick Middle Age Recovery Society.
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