Untitled

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 698, 10 April 1852, Page 4

The Romance of the Markets.—We know of nothing so sentimental in the columns of a daily newspaper as the article devoted to the state of the markets. We seldom peruse it without a tendency to tears, which are only checked by the recollection that it is only on bags of coffee,

bales of cotton, parcels of pepper, and sacks of flour, that we are exhausting our useless sympalhy.

We, however, defy any one to be otherwise than moved by the description of the markets which is evidently the production of a writer who luxuriates in a strain of melancholy tenderness that is excluded by universal consent Irom every other portion of the newspaper. The literary sentimentalist finding no market among the booksellers for his goods, has gone to the very markets themselves, and has secured a corner in the journals, where he may indulge without restraint his tendency to pathos.

Let us take a specimen of that affecting style of writing, which has found its way, appropriately enough, to Mincing Lane, ever since the mincing manner has been banished from the publications put foith by the West-end publishers. “An improved feeling bad again begun to show itself in the coffee market, where dulness had until lately prevailed, and sugars began to assume a livelier aspect.” Surely this must be written by some fashionable novelist “ out of luck,” whose Rosa Matildaisms, that once used to cloy the circulating libraries with their sweetness, have rushed to the sugar-cask as the only alternative to avoid the but-ter-shop. Substitute Augustus Danvers for the “coffee-market,” insert Rosalie in the place of “ sugars," and we get a sentence that would seem to form part of a sentimental novel of ten years back, when the writers of the same sort of stuff could command their three or five hundred pounds for an adequate lot of it. The paragragb, as amended, will stand thus: — “An improved feeling had again begun to shew itself in Augustus Danvers (the coffee-market), where dulness had until lately prevailed, and Rosalie (sugars) began to assume a livelier aspect.” We know nothing of the mysteries of what is termed the “staff” of a daily paper • but we certainly picture to ourselves the writer of the markets as a pale gentleman, with a forehead shaved up to its highest, a Byron tie, a turneddown shirt collar, and a melancholy cast of countenance. We can imagine him walking moodily about the markets, looking out anxiously for a glimpse of gloom in sugars, and feeling an indescribable satisfaction in the dulness of peppers. Why is it necessary that wool should be “flat,” Bengal figs “low,” Indigo “dull,” rice “depressed,” and everything that seems nice and eatable so wretchedly low-spirited? It is seldom we meet with a bit of sensible “firmness” in something or other; but, even if we do, we are told of “a tendency to give way,” before we get to the end of the article.

We earnestly entreat our daily contemporaries to get rid of the dull sentimental dogs who howl over the markets, and put them into the hands of some of the more lively writers, of whom there is no lack in all the newspaper establishments. We can never venture to look at the markets in any of the morning papers without feeling a consciousness that our spirits are going to be damped by some details of “dulness” here, “lowness” there, and “ a feeling of depression ” everywhere, in which we are only too ready to sympathise.— Punch.

The Judges at a Stand-still.—Unless something is speedily done to fill the gap left by the absence of business from the supeiior Courts, we shall have fifteen learned Judges dying of ennui on the floor of Westminster Hall. The other day we rushed into the Common Pleas, and found their Lordships with literally nothing before them but their hands, and on turning into the Exchequer, in the hope of more activity, we discovered in addition to the Barons on the bench, a barren void. The Justices of the Common Pleas have grown quite impatient of a life of indolence ; and, the other day were despatching messengers right and left to hunt up business from the other courts. There was, in fact, a regular battue of the legal preserves ; but though one or two very old birds of juniors were turned out, they had no motion in them and could offer no sport. After some difficulty, a Q.C. was bagged ; but he was not instructed, and would not favour the great guns on the bench with an elocutionary flight. To see four or five venerable legal luminaries all of a row—the Chief occupied in nothing, and the Puisnes helping their Chief—is a melancholy spectacle of judicial much-ado-about-nothingness. If a solitary “compute” happens to drop in, the judicial tnind, famishing for want of fodder, flies to it with all the alacrity of a starving crew at the last biscuit. There is scarcely a bone of contention left from which the Judges in Westminster Hall are enabled to pick a bit, and so great is the dearth that of even the smallest and most insignificant bone they insist on getting at the marrow. The bringing to bear of so much judicial power on a paltry amount of work, reminds one of a team of noble dray horses harnessed to a child’s toy waggon. We have sometimes wondered at the policy of keeping up a war establishment of Judges in time of peace; for never was less fighting or litigation in Westminster Hall; but we have come to a conclusion that five Judges are still necessary in each Couit, to keep each other company. As there is no public, no acting bar, and no business, the only mode of keeping the look of life about the Court is by a strong corps of Judges. It is true that the crew and the passengers have all left the ship; but the officers still cling to it, which is all right enough ; though we hardly see the necessity for filling up—particularly at a cost of five thousand a-year—every vacancy that arises in the command of an obsolete hull, which has got stuck in the mud, and is superseded by lighter, cheaper, aud faster-going vessels. — Punch. An Appropriate Toast.—On her Majesty’s recent visit to Lancaster Castle the debtors confined in that stronghold had a commemorative dinner, at which they feelingly drank the following toast: —“ May the tree of liberty be planted in the castle yard, and every one confined within its walls cut his stick from it. Advice to the Bloomers.—When the Spartan youth complained to his mother that “ his swotd was too short,” the heroic matron answered, “Add a step.” When ladies, who would be Bloomers, declare that petticoats are worn too long, laconic Punch says—“ Add a tuck.”