Be not thou scrupulous, O Captain! seize on Pigeon; pluck him gently but boldly; but above all, never let him go. If he is a stout cautious bird, of course you must be more cautious; if he is excessively silly and scared, perhaps the best way is just to take him round the neck at once, and strip the whole stock of plumage from his back. The feathers of the human pigeon being thus violently abstracted from him, no others supply their place and yet I do not pity him. He is now only undergoing the destiny of pigeons, and is, I do believe, as happy in his plucked as in his feathery state. He cannot purse out his breast, and bury his head, and fan his tail, and strut in the sun as if he were a turkey-cock. Under all those fine airs and feathers, he was but what he is now, a poor little meek, silly, cowardly bird, and his state of pride is not a whit more natural to him than his fallen condition. He soon grows used to it. He is too great a coward to despair; much too mean to be frightened because he must live by doing meanness. He is sure, if he cannot fly, to fall somehow or other on his little miserable legs: on these he hops about, and manages to live somewhere in his own mean way. He has but a small stomach, and doesn't mind what food he puts into it. He spunges on his relatives; or else, just before his utter ruin, he marries and has nine children (and such a family always lives); he turns bully, most likely, takes to drinking, and beats his wife, who supports him or takes to drinking too; or he gets a little place, a very little place: you hear he has some tide-waitership, or is clerk to some new milk company, or is lurking about a newspaper. He dies, and a subscription is raised for the Widow Pigeon, and we look no more to find a likeness of him in his children, who are as a new race. Blessed are ye little ones, for ye are born in poverty, and may bear it, or surmount it, and die rich. But woe to the Pigeons of this earth, for they are born rich that they may die poor. The end of Captain Rook-for we must bring both him and the paper to an end—is not more agreeable, but somewhat more manly and majestic than the conclusion of Mr. Pigeon. If you walk over to the Queen's Bench Prison, I would lay a wager that a dozen such are to be found there in a moment. They have a kind of luciferlook with them, and stare at you with fierce, twinkling, crow-footed eyes; or grin from under huge grizzly moustaches, as they walk up and down in their tattered brocades. What a dreadful activity is that of a madhouse, or a prison!-a dreary flagged court-yard, a long dark room, and the inmates of it, like the inmates of the menagerie cages, ceaselessly walking up and down! Mary Queen of Scots says very touchingly : Pour mon mal estranger Je ne m' arreste en place; Mais, j'en ay beau changer Up and down, up and down-the inward woe seems to spur the body onwards; and I think in both madhouse and prison you will find plenty of specimens of our Captain Rook. It is fine to mark him under the pressure of this woe, and see how fierce he looks when stirred up by the long pole of memory. In these asylums, the Rooks end their lives; or, more happy, they die miserably in a miserable provincial town abroad, and for the benefit of coming Rooks they commonly die early you as seldom hear of an old Rook (practising his trade) as of a rich one. It is a short-lived trade; not merry, for the gains are most precarious, and perpetual doubt and dread are not pleasant accompaniments of a profession :-not agreeable either, for though Captain Rook does not mind being a scoundrel, no man likes to be considered as such, and as such, he knows very well, does the world consider Captain Rook :-not profitable, for the expenses of the trade swallow up all the profits of it, and in addition leave the bankrupt with certain habits that have become as nature to him, and which, to live, he must gratify. I know no more miserable wretch than our Rook in his autumn days, at dismal Calais or Boulogne, or at the Bench yonder, with a whole load of diseases and wants, that have come to him in the course of his profession; the diseases and wants of sensuality, always pampered, and now agonising for lack of its unnatural food; the mind, which must think now, and has only bitter recollections, mortified ambitions, and unavailing scoundrelisms to con over! Oh, Captain Rook! what nice "chums" do you take with you into prison; what pleasant companions of exile follow you over the fines patriæ, or attend, the only watchers, round your miserable deathbed! My son, be not a Pigeon in thy dealings with the world :—but it is better to be a Pigeon than a Rook. We have been duli at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourne a third, and are at this moment doing dreary penance at-Hastings! CHARLES LANE. THE COCKNEY. BY DOUGLAS JERROLD. 'My lot might have been that of a slave, a savage, or a peasant," says the grateful Gibbon ; nor can I reflect without pleasure on the bounty of Nature, which cast my birth in a free and civilised country, in an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honourable rank, and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune." In his heart, the true Cockney has a kindred gratitude to that of the author of "The Rise and Fall," though it may happen he shall never express it; nay, shall be almost ignorant of its existence. Yet, notwithstanding, it is the unknown cause of his self-complacency, the hidden source of his pride, the reason of his compassionate consideration of the original deficiencies of his rustic brethren. He might have been born at the Land's-End; he might have spoken broad Cornish; he might have never seen St. Paul's Church, or the waxwork in Westminster Abbey. Hence, in the meaning of the classic historian, he must have been a slave, a savage, or a peasant. He is, however, none of these-but a Cockney; and therefore a person, to his own satisfaction at least, conversant with all London science and philosophy; and, by virtue of such advantage, justified in the wickedness of his jokes upon bacon, smock-frocks, and hob-nails. We believe that, despite much antiquarian research, the term Cockney has never been satisfactorily traced to its origin. Should we regret this? No; we ought rather to rejoice that what has been familiarised by-shall we say, contempt-is indeed of an antiquity The Cockney, like the forty centuries apostrophised by Bonaparte, may, from the height of time, look down upon the present fleeting generation. Whence Cockney? Unde derivatur? Antiquarians have dreamt dreams about it; have, indeed, written their pages in sand but we have nothing certain-nothing to quench curiosity thirsting for a draught of truth. With these premises, we may safely touch upon the fables imagined by the ingenious men who have, as S S |