66 and religious. This excellent person was in the habit of moralizing upon every thing that he did or suffered, such as Upon his manner of giving meat to his dog,"-" Upon his horse stumbling in a very fair way,' "Upon his sitting at ease in a coach that went very fast," &c. Among other Reflections, is one "Upon a fish's struggling after having swallowed the hook." It amounts to this; that at the moment when the fish thinks himself about to be most happy, the hook "does so wound and tear his tender gills, and thereby puts him into such restless pain, that no doubt he wishes the hook, bait and all, were out of his torn jaws again. Thus," says he, "men who do what they should not to obtain any sensual desires," &c. &c. Not a thought comes over him as to his own part in the business, and what he ought to say of himself for tearing the jaws and gills to indulge his own appetite for excitement. Take also the following: Fifth Section-Reflection 1. Killing a crow (out of window) in a hog's trough, and immediately tracing the ensuing reflection with a pen made of one of his quills.-Long and patiently did I wait for this unlucky crow,wallowing in the sluttish trough (whose sides kept him a great while out of the reach of my gun), and gorging himself with no less greediness than the very swinish proprietaries of the feast, till at length my no less unexpected than fatal shot in a moment struck him down, and turning the scene of his delight into that of his pangs, made him abruptly alter his note, and change his triumphant chaunt into a dismal and tragic noise. This method is not unusual to divine justice towards brawny and incorrigible sinners," &c. &c. Thus the crow, for eating his dinner, is a rascal worthy to be shot by the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle, before the latter sits down to his own; while the said Mr. Boyle, instead of contenting himself with being a gentleman in search of amusement at the expence *of birds and fish, is a representative of Divine Justice. We laugh at this wretched moral pedantry now, and deplore the involuntary hard-heartedness which such mistakes in religion tended to produce; but in how many respects should it not make us look about us, and see where we fall short of an enlargement of thinking? TO CORRESPONDENTS. A True Story will be inserted with pleasure. Printed and published by JOSEPH APPLEYARD, No. 19, Catherine-street, Strand. Price 2d. And sold also by A. GLIDDON, Importer of Snuffs, No. 31, Tavistockstreet, Covent-garden. Orders received at the above places, and by all Booksellers and Newsmeu. THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, SPENSER. No. XL.-WEDNESDAY, JULY 12th, 1820. SUPERFINE BREEDING. THERE is an anecdote in Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticæ, Lib. 10, Cap. 6,) which exhibits, we think, one of the highest instances of what may be called polite blackguardism that we ever remember to have read. The fastidiousness, self-will, and infinite resentment against a multitude of one's fellow-creatures for presuming to come in contact with one's own importance, are truly edifying: and to complete the lesson, this extraordinary specimen of the effect of superfine breeding and blood is handed down to us in the person of a lady. Her words might be thought to have been a bad joke; and bad enough it would have been; but the sense that was shewn of them proves them to have been very gravely regarded. Claudia, the daughter of Appius Cæcus, in coming away from a public spectacle, was much pressed and pushed about by the crowd; upon which she thus vented her impatience:-"What should I have suffered now, and how much more should I have been squeezed and knocked about, if my brother Publius Claudius had not had his ships destroyed in battle, with all that heap of men? I should have been. absolutely jammed to death! Would to heaven my brother were alive again, and could go with another fleet to Sicily, and be the death of this host of people, who plague and pester one in this horrid manner!" * For these words, 66 SO wicked and so uncivic," says good old Gellius, (tam improba ac tam incivilia) the Ediles, Caius Fundanus and Tiberius Sempronius, got the lady fined in the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds brass. There is a long account in Livy of the speech which they made to the people, in reply to the noble families that interceded for her. It is very indignant. Claudia herself confessed her words, and does not appear to have joined in the intercession. They are not related at such length by Livy, as by Aulus Gellius. He "Quid me nunc factum esset, quantoque arctius pressiusque conflictata essem, si P. Claudius frater meus navali prælio classem navium cum ingenti civium numero non perdidisset? certè quidem majore nunc copiâ populi oppressa intercidissem. Sed utinam, inquit, reviviscat frater, aliamque classem in Siciliam ducat, atque istam multitudinem perditum eat, quæ me malè nunc miseram convexavit." merely makes her wish that her brother were alive to take out another fleet. But he shews his own sense of the ebullition by calling it a dreadful imprecation; and her rage was even more gratuitous according to his account, for he describes her as coming from the shews in a chariot. Insolence and want of feeling appear to have been hereditary in this Appian family: which gives us also a strong sense of their want of capacity; otherwise a disgust at such manners must have been generated in some of the children. They were famous for opposing every popular law, and for having kept the Commons as long as possible out of any share in public honours and government. The villain Appius Claudius, whose well-known story has lately been made still more familiar to the public by the tragedy of Mr. Knowles, was among it's ancestors. Appius Cæcus, or the Blind, the father of Claudia, though he constructed the celebrated Appian Way and otherwise benefited the city, was a very unpopular man, wilful, haughty, and lawless. He retained possession of the Censorship beyond the limited period. It is an instance perhaps of his unpopularity, as well as of the superstition of the times, that having made a change in one of the priestly offices, and become blind some years afterwards, the Romans attributed it to the vengeance of heaven; an opinion which Livy repeats with great devotion, calling it a warning against innovations in religion. It had no effect however upon Claudius the brother, whose rashness furnished the pious Romans with a similar example to point at. Before an engagement with the Carthaginians, the Sacred Chickens were consulted, and because they would not peck and furnish him with a good omen, he ordered them to be thrown into the sea. "If they won't eat," said he, "let 'em drink." The engagement was one of the worst planned, and the worst fought in the world; but the men were avowedly dispirited by the Consul's irreverend behaviour to the chickens ; and his impiety shared the disgrace with his folly. Liry represents him as an epitome of all that was bad in his family; proud, stubborn, unmerciful though full of faults himself, and wilful and precipitate to a degree of madness. This was the battle, of which his sister wished to see a repetition. It cost the Romans many ships sunk, ninety-three taken, and according to the historian, the miraculous loss of eight thousand men killed and twenty thousand taken prisoners, while the Carthaginians lost not a ship or a man. SHAKING HANDS. Among the first things which we remember noticing in the manners of people, were two errors in the custom of shaking hands. Some we observed, grasped every body's hand alike,-with an equal fervour of grip. You would have thought that Jenkins was the best friend they had in the world; but on succeeding to the squeeze, though a slight acquaintance, you found it equally flattering to yourself; and on the appearance of somebody else (whose name, if turned out, the operator had forgotten,) the crush was no less complimentary :-the face was as earnest and beaming, the "glad to see you" as syllabical and sincere, and the shake as close, as long, and as rejoicing, as if the semi-unknown was a friend come home from the Desarts. On the other hand, there would be a gentleman now and then as coy of his hand, as if he were a prude or had a whitlow. It was in vain, that your pretensions did not go beyond the "civil salute" of the ordinary shake; or that being introduced to him in a friendly manner and expected to shake hands with the rest of the company, you could not in decency omit his. His fingers, half coming out, and half retreating, seemed to think that you were going to do them a mischief; and when you got hold of them, the whole shake was on your side the other hand did but proudly or pensively acquiesce, there was no knowing which; you had to sustain it, as you might a lady's in handing her to a seat: and it was an equal perplexity to know how to shake or to let it go. The one seemed a violence done to the patient; the other an aukward responsibility brought upon yourself. You did not know, all the evening, whether you were not an object of dislike to the person; till on the party's breaking up, you saw him behave like an equally ill-used gentleman, to all who practised the same unthinking civility. Both these errors, we think, might as well be avoided: but of the too, we must say we prefer the former. If it does not look so much like particular sincerity, it looks more like general kindness; and if those two virtues are to be separated, (which they assuredly need not be, if considered without spleen) the world can better afford to dispense with an unpleasant truth than a gratuitous humanity. Besides, it is more difficult to make sure of the one, than to practice the other; and kindness itself is the best of all truths. As long as we are sure of that, we are sure of something, and of something pleasant. It is always the best end, if not in every instance the most logical means. This manual shyness is sometimes attributed to modesty, but never, we suspect, with justice, unless it be that sort of modesty, whose fear of committing itself is grounded in pride. Want of address is a better reason, but this particular instance of it would be grounded in the same feeling. It always implies a habit either of pride or distrust. We have met with two really kind men, who evinced this soreness of hand. Neither of them perhaps thought himself inferior to any body. about him, and both had good reason to think highly of themselves; but both had been sanguine men contradicted in their early hopes. There was a plot to meet the hand of one of them with a fish-slice, in order to shew him the disadvantage to which he put his friends by that flat mode of salutation; but the conspirator had not the courage to do it. Whether he heard of the intention, we know not; but shortly afterwards he took very kindly to a shake. The other was the only man of a warm set of politicians, who remained true to his first love of mankind. He was impatient at the change of his companions and at the folly and inattention of the rest; but though his manner became cold, his consistency still remained warm; and this gave him a right to be as strange as he pleased... ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF LAUREL FROM VAUCLUSE. And this piece of laurel is from Vaucluse! Perhaps Petrarch, perhaps Laura, sat under it! This is a true present. What an exquisite dry old, vital, young-looking, everlasting twig it is! It has been plucked nine months, and looks as hale and as crisp as if it would last ninety years. It shall last at any rate as long as it's owner, and longer, if care and love can preserve it. How beautifully it is turned! It was a happy pull from the tree. It's shape is the very line of beauty; it has berries upon it, as if resolved to shew us in what fine condition the trees are; while the leaves issue from it, and swerve upwards with their elegant points, as though they had come from adoruing the poet's head. Be thou among the best of one's keepsakes, thou gentle stem, in deliciis nostris ;-and may the very maid-servant who wonders to see thy withered beauty in it's frame, miss her lover the next five weeks, for not having the instinct to know that thou must have something to do with love. Perhaps Petrarch has felt the old ancestral boughs of this branch, stretching over his head, and whispering to him of the name of Laura, of his love, and of their future glory; for all these ideas used to be entwined in one. (Sestina 2, Canzone 17, Sonetti 162, 163, 164, 207, 224, &c.) Perhaps it is of the very stock of that bough, which he describes as supplying his mistress with a leaning-stock when she sat in her favourite bower. (See the translation at the end.) Giovane donna sotto un verde lauro A youthful lady under a green laurel I saw, more fair and colder than white snows Unshone upon for many and many a year: And her sweet looks, and hair, and way of speaking, The laurel seems more appropriated to Petrarch than to any other poet. He delighted to sit under it's leaves; he loved it both for itself, and for the resemblance of it's name to that of his mistress; he wrote of it continually; and he was called from out of it's shade, to be crowned with it in the Capitol. It is a remarkable instance of the fondness witle which he cherished the united ideas of Laura and the Jaurel, that he confesses it to have been one of the greatest delights he experienced in receiving the crown upon his head. It was out of Vaucluse that he was called. Vaucluse, Valchiusa, the Shut Valley, (from which the French, in the modern enthusiasm for intellect, gave the name to the department in which it lies), is a remarkable spot in the old poetical region of Provence, consisting of a little deep glen of green meadows surrounded with rocks, and containing the fountain of the river Sorgue. Petrarch, when a boy of eight er |