



Produced by David Widger





NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS

By Charles James Lever

     "The world's my filbert which with my crackers I will open."

Shakespear.

     "The priest calls the lawyer a cheat,
     And the lawyer beknaves the divine;
     And the statesman, because he's so great,
     Thinks his trade's as honest as mine."

Beggars Opera

     "Hard texts are nuts (I will not call them cheaters,)
     Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;
     Open the shells, and you shall have the meat:
     They are are brought for you to crack and eat."

John Bunyan.


Illustrated By "Phiz."

London: Chapman And Hall, 193 Piccadilly.

MDCCCLVII.


[Illustration: 018]




AN OPENING NUT.


"An Opening Nut."

This is the age of popular delusions! Everybody endeavours to be
somebody else, and everything is made to resemble something it is not.
Every class and section of society seeks to mystify the other, and the
whole world is masquerading it, very much it would seem to the whole
world's delight. There are people who think the Tories consistent--the
Whigs honest--and the Repealers respectable. Nothing too palpable in
absurdity not to have its followers; nor does the ridicule cease with
ourselves; but all who visit us catch the malady--witness the Indian
Chiefs, who called on Ben. D'Israeli, to see the style of life and
habits of the English Aristocracy.

These things after all are but poor delusions--little better than what
the Wizard of the North calls "Parlour Magic," and might be left to
time, to be laughed at, just like the French war clamour--the O'Connell
denunciation--or the Young England discovery of the "pure 'Cocktailian'
race." There are, however, other fallacies which from age and habit have
gradually associated themselves with our social existence, and become,
as it were, national. To disabuse the world of some of these, has been
my object in the present little volume. To endeavour not only to show
that we often

     "Compound for sins we are inclined to,
     By damning those we have no mind to;"

but also, that our laws and institutions--our manners and customs--are
based less upon principles of justice, than mere convenience and social
advantage.

That such an undertaking will be graciously received or kindly
acknowledged, I have never been able to persuade myself; no more than I
feel disposed to believe, that hunger can be fed by Acts of Parliament;
or starvation alleviated by Cricket or Jack in the bowl; however, it is
_my_ way of regenerating the land, and why shouldn't I "roll my tub"
as well as my neighbours. Why I have given the volume its present
title, would be perhaps more difficult to account for, save, that I
have remarked on so many classes and gradations of people; and that,
"Knocks" at our neighbours are generally "Nuts" to ourselves.

[Illustration: 021]

[Illustration: 022]




A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS

If Providence, instead of a vagabond, had made me a justice of the
peace, there is no species of penalty I would not have enforced against
a class of offenders, upon whom it is the perverted taste of the day
to bestow wealth, praise, honour, and reputation; in a word, upon that
portion of the writers for our periodical literature whose pastime it
is by high-flown and exaggerated pictures of society, places, and
amusements, to mislead the too credulous and believing world; who, in
the search for information and instruction, are but reaping a barren
harvest of deceit and illusion.

Every one is loud and energetic in his condemnation of a bubble
speculation; every one is severe upon the dishonest features of
bankruptcy, and the demerits of un-trusty guardianship; but while
the law visits these with its pains and penalties, and while heavy
inflictions follow on those breaches of trust, which affect our pocket,
yet can he "walk scatheless," with port erect and visage high who, for
mere amusement--for the passing pleasure of the moment--or, baser still,
for certain pounds per sheet, can, present us with the air-drawn daggers
of a dyspeptic imagination for the real woes of life, or paint the most
commonplace and tiresome subjects with colours so vivid and so glowing
as to persuade the unwary reader that a paradise of pleasure and
enjoyment, hitherto unknown, is open before him. The treadmill and the
ducking-stool, "_me judice_" would no longer be tenanted by rambling
gipsies or convivial rioters, but would display to the admiring gaze of
an assembled multitude the aristocratic features of Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton, the dark whiskers of Disraeli, the long and graceful proportions
of Hamilton Maxwell, or the portly paunch and melodramatic frown of
that right pleasant fellow, Henry Addison himself.

You cannot open a newspaper without meeting some narrative of what, in
the phrase of the day, is denominated an "attempted imposition." Count
Skryznyzk, with black moustachoes and a beard to match, after being a
lion of Lord Dudley Stuart's parties, and the delight of a certain set
of people in the West-end--who, when they give a tea-party, call it a
_soiree_, and deem it necessary to have either a Hindoo or a Hottentot,
a Pole, or a Piano-player, to interest their guests--was lately brought
up before Sir Peter Laurie, charged by 964 with obtaining money under
false pretences, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment and hard
labour at the treadmill.

The charge looks a grave one, good reader, and perhaps already some
notion is trotting through your head about forgery or embezzlement; you
think of widows rendered desolate, or orphans defrauded; you lament over
the hard-earned pittance of persevering industry lost to its possessor;
and, in your heart, you acknowledge that there may have been some cause
for the partition of Poland, and that the Emperor of the Russias, like
another monarch, may not be half so black as he is painted. But spare
your honest indignation; our unpronounceable friend did none of
these. No; the head and front of his offending was simply exciting the
sympathies of a feeling world for his own deep wrongs; for the fate
of his father, beheaded in the Grand Place at Warsaw; for his four
brothers, doomed never to see the sun in the dark mines of Tobolsk; for
his beautiful sister, reared in the lap of luxury and wealth, wandering
houseless and an outcast around the palaces of St. Petersburg, wearying
heaven itself with cries for mercy on her banished