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                        WISE SAWS
                          AND
                    MODERN INSTANCES.
                       VOL. II.

                        LONDON:
               Printed by A. SPOTTISWOODE,
                    New-Street-Square.

                       WISE SAWS
                          AND
                   MODERN INSTANCES.
                          BY
                     THOMAS COOPER,
                     THE CHARTIST,

                       AUTHOR OF
              "THE PURGATORY OF SUICIDES."


                     IN TWO VOLUMES.
                        VOL. II.


                        LONDON:
               PRINTED FOR JEREMIAH HOW,
                    209. PICCADILLY.
                         1845.




                       CONTENTS
                          OF
                   THE SECOND VOLUME.


                                                            PAGE

  THE OLD CORPORATION                                          7

  NED WILCOM; A STORY OF A FATHER'S SACRIFICE OF HIS
  CHILD AT THE SHRINE OF MAMMON                               25

  LONDON 'VENTURE; OR, THE OLD STORY OVER AGAIN               42

  THE LAD WHO FELT LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER                   60

  THE INTELLECTUAL LEVER THAT LACKED A FULCRUM                84

  NICHOLAS NIXON, "GENTLEMAN," WHO COULD NOT UNDERSTAND
  WHY, BUT WHO KNEW "IT WAS SO"                              111

  SIGNS OF THE TIMES; OR, ONE PARSON AND TWO CLERKS          123

  DAME DEBORAH THRUMPKINSON, AND HER ORPHAN APPRENTICE,
  JOE                                                        150

  TOBY LACKPENNY THE PHILOSOPHICAL: A DEVOTEE OF
  THE MARVELLOUS                                             204




                         THE OLD CORPORATION.


Those words "odd," and "singular," and "eccentric," what odd, singular,
eccentric sort of words they are, reader! How often they mean
nothing,--being thrown out, as descriptions of character, by drivelling
Ignorance, who scrapes them up as the dregs,--the mere siftings left at
the bottom of his vocabulary, when he has expended his scant collection
of more definite images-in-syllables. And how much more often are they
affixed to the memories of the living or dead, who have been real
brothers among men, and have thus earned these epithets from jaundiced
envy, or guilty selfishness, or heartless pride and tyranny. How little
it commends to us, either our common nature, or such corrupt fashioning
as ages of wrong have given it, that, if we would become acquainted with
a truly good man,--a being to love and to knit the heart unto,--we must
seek for him among the class of character which the world--woe worth
it!--calls "odd," or "singular," or "eccentric!"

Yet so it is, the best of mankind, those, most veritably, "of whom the
world was not worthy," have been, in their day, either the butt for the
sneers of silliness, or the object of envy's relentless hate, or they
have toiled and toiled, perhaps unto martyrdom, beneath the withering,
blasting frown of pride and oppression. Ay, and let us be honest with
ourselves, and confess, that though years or hard experience may have
bettered our own natures,--for we are all too much like that kind of
fruit which takes long days and many weathers to ripen it, so as to
bring forth its most wholesome flavour,--let us be honest, I say, with
ourselves, and confess, that we were as foolishly willing as others, in
our youth, to laugh at what the varlet world calls oddness, and
singularity, and eccentricity. Some of us, however, now see matters in a
somewhat different light. We have discovered that there is some marrow
of meaning in many of those old saws we once thought so tiresome and
dry,--such as, "All is not gold that glitters," and, "Judge not a nut by
the shell," and the like; and we say, within ourselves, when we are in a
moralising mood, (as you and I are now, reader,) that, if we were young
again, we would not join the world in laughing as we used to laugh with
it, at certain queer folk who dwell in our memories,--for we begin to
have a shrewd suspicion that they were among the true "diamonds in the
rough" of human character.

And, to be truly candid with ourselves, reader, have not you and I
found out, by this time, that we are, to all intents and purposes, as
"odd," and as "singular," and as "eccentric," as other folk? Is not the
jewel of the truth this,--as pointless as the saying may look at first
sight,--that--All men are singular? Hath not every man his likes and his
dislikes, his whims and his caprices, his fancies and his hobbies, his
faults and his failings? And are not these found so strangely interwoven
in our daily thinkings, and sayings, and doings, that they may well make
observers ponder upon them, if they had not enough of similar employment
at home? Nay, if some one unnatural sort of thought, or impression, or
habit, which each of us have, could be seen, at all times, by every
body, in its true dimensions, would it not look as uncouth as one of
those huge boulders of primary rock tumbled down from the mass, and left
sticking out from some late-formed strata of marl, quite at a distance
from its proper place, that the geologists talk of? Would not the
thought, or impression, or habit, if our most attached friends could see
it in its proper moral bulk, dwarf many of our "excellencies," as their
partiality phrases it, and really render us poor deformed things, in
their judgment?

"What, then, do ye mean to preach us into the belief that it is a crime
for us ever to have a hearty, harmless laugh, at a queer fellow when we
chance to see him?" Not exactly so, my lads; but we ought never to
forget that we are queer fellows ourselves. Nor ought we to fail in the
reflection that, if we were fully acquainted with that queer fellow, it
might happen we should discover him to be of infinitely more moral value
than ten thousand of the smooth-trimmed estimables in the eye of the
world, who conform to all its precepts so obediently that they never
anger it. And, much more, if we know enough of the "queer fellow" to be
aware that a true, warm, glowing, fraternal heart for his
fellow-creatures beats in his bosom, notwithstanding a few outward
traits of somewhat striking difference from the crowd, why, then, it
becomes our bounden duty,--I will not say, never to smile at his
peculiarities, for that sort of puritanism will not make us better
men,--but to dwell upon his virtues and excellencies,--to extol them,
yea, to enthrone them, whenever he is seen, or heard, or talked of, by
those with whom we company.

Perhaps political party is more universal than any other bad influence
without, in misguiding Englishmen into ill-natured, or contemptuous, or
depreciatory judgments of their neighbours and fellow-townsmen. The last
dozen or fifteen years, especially, have engendered a superabundance of
this foul canker;--so many new rivalries have sprung up with the great
changes in political and municipal institutions; and men, from the
mightiest to the meanest, have been caught up, and whirled along, in
many instances so involuntarily, into the rush and torrent of change.
And yet, how the lapse of these dozen or fifteen years hath altered the
judgment of many of us, with regard to some men and their party-cries.
What a wide-spread "liberal" laudation, for instance, there was about
the famous definition of a Tory, in the _Times_,--and yet how soon it
became its own "duck-legged drummer-boy," and all that! Nay, how soon
did some of the very chiefs of the potential reforming party,--from
idols of the multitude,--by their refusal to complete what they had
begun, and, indeed, in some instances, by their open manifestation of a
will to undo what they had done,--become its scoff and scorn, nay, even
its detestation!

And then the old "Guilds," or "Corporations," to which the new
"Town-Councils" have succeeded,--what a general tendency to exaggeration
there was in the mode of judging of them, and in the tone of talking and
writing about them, especially in the public prints. How witty were the
newspaper people in their conceits of conserving, or pickling, or
embalming an alderman, and having him placed in the British Museum, as a
curiosity for antiquaries to form profound speculations upon, some ten
or twelve centuries into futurity! Ay, and how eloquently abusive was
the prevailing Whig strain about "nests of corruption," and "rotten
lumber," and "fine pickings," and "impositions, and frauds, and dark
rogueries of the self-elect!" And how the scale has turned, since, in
the greater share of boroughs, where the poor and labouring classes
threw up their hats for joy at "municipal reform,"--and now mutter
discontent at the pride of upstarts become insolent oppressors,--or
openly curse, as in the poverty-stricken and hunger-bitten manufacturing
districts, at the relentless and grinding tyrannies of the recreant
middle-classes whom municipal honours have drawn off from their
hot-blooded radicalism, and converted into cold, unfeeling, merciless
wielders of magisterial or other local power.

There was, it cannot be denied, in the droll trappings and antiquated
mummeries of the old guilds,--in their ermined scarlet cloaks, and funny
cocked hats, and in their maces and staves,--and above all, in the
starch, and march, and swelling, and strut, and pomposity, with which
these were worn or borne,--much that was calculated to tickle the
spectator into mirth; but, really, when one thinks of it, are the
horse-hair wig of a bishop, a judge, or a barrister, the robe and
coronet of a peer, or the crown and sceptre of a king or queen, less
like playthings for upgrown children than were the "regalia" and antique
habits of the old corporation-men? Was Cromwell so far beside the mark
when he called the Speaker's mace a "fool's bauble?"--and might not the
expression be applied with as much fitness to many other "ensigns of
office," as they are called?

And again: though it is true that a grand uncurtaining of robbery,--for
that is the plain English of it,--was made in some, at least, of the old
boroughs, by the inquest of that parliamentary commission which preceded
the sweeping away of the old corporations,--yet are we not, now, become
conscious, that amid the party heat and animosity of the period, much
private excellence was over-shaded or forgotten in the rage of public
censure, nay, that much virtue was denied, even where it was known to
exist, lest the recognition of it should mar the scheme for overthrowing
the party to which that virtue was attached?

This is a long exordium for a fugitive sketch, and it is time to say it
has sprung from reflections created in the mind of an imprisoned
"conspirator" and "mover of sedition," by the flitting across his cell,
in his imagination, of sundry bygone shapes with whom he was, more or
less, familiar at one period of his changeful life. It is the "Old
Corporation" of the ancient and time-honoured city of Lincoln, of which
the writer speaks;--and though wit might discover among its members many
a foible that would form a picture to "make those laugh whose lungs are
tickled o' the sere," yet generosity, and justice, no less, must
confess, that after the most searching inquiry and exposure, they were
neither individually nor collectively stained with the acts of
peculation and embezzlement, nor application of public funds to
political party purposes, which were so heavily, and, no doubt, truly
charged on some of the old guilds in other parts of the country.

Yet they were, as a body, supporters of the _ancien regime_, as was
natural: they had been inured, the greater part of them, through nearly
the whole of their lives, to look upon the established state of things
as the best and fittest;--and, no doubt, the majority of them
conscientiously believed it to be so,--failing, through the confined and
stinted nature of their social training, to reflect that what was
productive to themselves, the few, of pleasure or comfort, might confer
no benefits on the many,--but rather be a source, to these, of deep and
increasing suffering. Passing by many a picture that starts to memory of
"mayoralty," and its ludicrous airs of greatness, and many a
reminiscence of grave joke and lighter whimsicality,--of burlesque
importance, and mirth-moving earnestness about trifles,--recollection
dwells with consolated interest on more durable limnings of simple,
uncorrupted manners, and warm hearts, and really expansive natures, that
belonged to some of that "Old Corporation."

There is one comes before me, vividly, at this moment,--while that sweet
robin-red-breast hops into my day-room, and bends his neck to look at me
so knowingly and friendlily in my loneliness, as he doth, almost
daily;--and the loved bird's image consorts delightfully with him I was
thinking of,--for, above all things, the fine, noble-hearted, yet meek
and gentle old alderman, loved to be thought and esteemed an
_ornithologist_! That was his pride, his loftiest aim, his highest
ambition,--as far as reputation or a name was the subject of his
thought. As for his charities, and enlarged acts of sympathy for his
suffering fellow-creatures, his deeds of mercy and goodness, he strove
to hide them, performing them often by stealth, and half denying the
performance of them, when admiration of his beneficence kindled praise
of it in his hearing. Ah! it is too true: he relieved wretchedness till
his purse was scanty, and his circumstances were straitened;--and
then,--and then,--in spite of his aldermanic dignity, in spite of his
"respectable" family connections, and even the respectability of his own
practice and profession, as a surgeon,--he was mentioned as the
"odd,"--the "singular,"--the "eccentric" Mr. ----!

_That_ is the world. Who would have dreamt that Alderman----was odd, or
singular, or eccentric, had he kept his