GRIMM'S GHOST.

LETTER XXVI.

Anti-out of Town Company.

THE rage for new joint-stock companies, owing to a recent hoax in the neighbourhood of Bartholomew-lane, is a little on the wane in this overgrown metropolis. The people who hang about Capel-court have jumped headlong into many a scheme for pearl-diving, gold-digging, Thames-preaching, road-railing, and Jeremy Bentham knows what beside. Most of them have got a (lame) ducking for their pains. At first it was who but they : but when it came to "cashing-up," affairs assumed a soberer complexion. Unlike the Whitfield process, a "call" brought them to their senses, and latterly the likeness of all projects, old or new, has been drawn in darkness and shadow. It is now discovered that the Egyptian Trading Company brings home nothing but mummy-dust for snuff-takers: the produce of the swamps of Brazil is alleged to be only beneficial to toad-eaters; and as for the British Fishing Company, notwithstanding its capital of 500,000l. sterling, I would not stand in its chairman's shoes for the best John Dory that ever was brought to Quin's table. So widely has the drag-net of this association been spread, that actions for false imprisonment are (I happen to know) depending against its trustees at the suit of Mr. Codd of Hull and Mr. Pike of Bridgwater. Mr. Herring the comedian, who was most unceremoniously hooked out of Commodore Trunnion, in Astley's amphitheatre, has indeed, like his theatric predecessor Macklin, consented to stay proceedings on payment of costs-people who have their benefit to make should not create enemies. But Mr. Salmon of Devizes is determined to go to a jury.

Let us not, however, in our zeal to discourage visionary projects, throw a damp upon those which tend to manifest utility. We may sneer at plans for climbing the Andes, and for diving into the Caspian sea; but that man must have a strange notion of the ridiculous who can attempt to cast ridicule upon the latest and most rational of projects, which has recently made its appearance in Capel-court, under the title of the new Grand Joint-stock Anti-out-of-Town Company! The prospectus, which now lies before me, paints in lively colours the strong dislike which people in general have to going into the country. Then why go they? It may be asked, "Poor man! how gat he there ?" The answer is obvious! Honour requires it! the same fondness for character which induces us to measure distances at Chalk-farm, sit out a house-dinner at the Alfred, drive in a cabriolet with a pair of round shoulders, and a couple of kid-leather gloves parallel with one's eyes along Regent-street, or read Tremaine quite through without missing a page of the third volume, hurries some of us to the sands of Ramsgate, and others to the brick pavement of Brighton-"modo Thebis, modo Athenis." No sooner, says the prospectus, does July arrive, than the good people of London begin to be cross-examined out of their habitations. Nobody admits that he means to stay in town. One talks of Broadstairs, and means indeed to take a tour of the whole Isle of Thanet to look after the harvest; one intends to pop over to France, and perhaps take a peep at Holland: a third has never seen Edinburgh, and a fourth, who picks his teeth seven days in the week at

VOL. X. No. 57.-1825.

25

the Medusa Club, where he purchases endurance for five guineas per annum, has been so pressed both to take a month's shooting at Lord Bagwell's in Berkshire, and to stay in a house with some nice girls three miles from Maidstone, that he really does not know which to decide upon. Survey these several parties, continues the prospectus of the new company, when they have arrived at their place of rural destination, and what does the view present? A sad picture of ennui ! The yawns of the individuals are absolutely appalling! The tourist through the whole Isle of Thanet amuses himself by trying to pitch pebbles through the spokes of a bathing-machine at Margate: the popper over to France and peep-taker at Holland halts at Calais, gets a glimpse of the ex dandy Brummel, and regales himself with a slice from a yard and a half of sour bread, and still sourer wine at Quillac's : while the third, who has never seen Edinburgh, puts into Scarborough, horridly sea-sick, goes to the theatre, and meets with that melancholy accident, a comic song between the acts! The member of the Medusa Club luckily stays where he is, as nobody will endure him where he is

not.

"To check these heroes, and their laurels crop,

To bring them back to reason—and their shop”—

to dissipate that sickness of stomach which the smell of wild roses and the sound of lowing cattle and twittering chaffinches are calculated to create in the natives of London; in short, to give to shareholders the semblance of visiting the country, while they in reality remain in town, are the objects which the founders of the Anti-out-of-Town Company have in view. The capital is half a million, and there are 5000 shares. A handsome edifice is already erected upon an area of waste land in Whitefriars. From this building, a sub-way under the streets of London conducts to Bond-street in the west, and to the Royal Exchange in the east; with diverging under-paths to the Lyceum, the Haymarket-theatre, Astley's, and the Circus. There is a handsome dining-room and drawing-room looking out into a clean well-paved court-yard; and the prints that adorn the walls of these two apartments are so selected as carefully to exclude all hateful ideas of mountains or meadows. They consist of a front view of Carlton-palace; the spire of Saint Bride's Church as at present opened to Fleet-street, with Hone's shop-window in shadow; the execution of Lord Balmerino upon Tower-hill; the Light-horse Volunteers mounting guard at the corner of Shoe-lane, in Fleet-street aforesaid; Abraham Newland, cut off at the knees like his Chevy Chace predecessor Witherington; Tom Paine, William Wilberforce, and Madame Vestris drawing on a white kid glove. At first a back view of Sadler's Wells, with the pipefield adjacent, was suspended over the chimney-piece; but this has been since removed as exciting ideas of too pastoral a cast. All sparrows are carefully chased from the premises, and people are hired to cry milk and sweep at the proper hour in the morning. There is a grand piano-forte in the drawing-room, but no songs are allowed to be sung to it but such as, "Oh, London is a fine town." "Hark, the merry Christchurch Bells." "From your rocks, storming Lannow, I fly ;" and "Ye shall walk in silk attire." Miss Martha Mac-treble begged hard for ""Twas within a mile of Edinburgh Town," but, on a reference to the directors, it was determined that it was at least three

quarters of a mile out of the rules. The dinner is handsome and wellserved, and a sprig of London pride is laid upon each member's plate. The sub-ways to which I have alluded, conduct such gentlemen as have nothing to do, to their clubs in Pall Mall East and its environs. Mock mistachios and evanescent chin tufts are provided at the bar, enve, loped in which, by way of concealment, they may boldly read the papers at the Union, call for coffee at the United Service, peep at a poet at the Athenæum, or applaud Tarrare the Tartar chief from a latticed box at the Lyceum. Such gentlemen as are engaged in commerce may, by the same subterraneous means, issue forth from the cellars under the Royal Exchange, emerge at Batson's, sneak over to the Baltic, bid for Molasses, Scammony, Gum Mastic, and dry Memel calf-skins in Mincing-lane, and afterwards, replunging into Cimmerian darkness, join their old associates in Whitefriars.

"As under seas Alpheus' secret sluice

Bears Pisa's offerings to his Arethuse."

There is a large room in the upper part of the edifice entirely appro priated to models in cork of all the principal watering places. Upon these a Scottish gentleman in black lectures every morning at 12, giving the spectator a correct notion of Jacob's ladder, the lighthouse pier, and Sir William Curtis's house at Ramsgate; the two libraries and arched excavation of cliff at Broadstairs; the number of steps that lead up to the church at Whitby; the battery walk at Hastings, with the library at one end of it, where a young lady favours the company with a bravura song; the chain-pier at Brighton, shewing how the company may either ascend through the cliff, or get out further on, if they wish to go to the York Hotel; not to mention the well walk and church-yard at Cheltenham, and the Sussex Arms and pantiles (I beg their pardon, the esplanade) at Tunbridge Wells. An attendance at a single course of these lectures will enable any lady or gentleman, with ordinary attention, on emerging from their month's quarantine, so to swear, that they have been at all, any, or either of the above-mentioned places, that I defy Charles Phillips himself to cross-examine them out of the allegation. This is a saving of time, trouble, and expense, which is at once worth more than all the money.

Into this asylum, as into a nunnery, will, I have no doubt, temporarily retire many a Devonshire-street dowager, who now shuts her front windows and steals out for exercise backward, amid the hostile hoofs of the curry-combed animals in Devonshire Mews. Here she will neither be broiled by the sun upon Brighton Downs, nor cut in wain by the East wind at the corner of Albion-place, Ramsgate; but she may, and doubtless will, on quitting her seclusion, complain of having endured both. Into this retreat, as into a monastery, will gladly wander many a junior barrister from Fig-tree Court adjacent, whose half-guinea motions, "few and far between," debar him from the Brighton race-course; whose relations in Cumberland are not over anxious for another view of his visage; and who, surveying Vincent Wing with a mournful eye, wonders what the long vacation means by yawning from the 22d of June to the 7th of November. Hitherto, too, will drop in many a dweller in the regions of Finsbury, who would "rather meet the devil himself" than a wagon drawn by a team of oxen. Several rare exotics are hung up in the pantry of the Institution,

for the edification of gentlemen of the last-mentioned fraternity, consisting of a stuffed bird, called a pheasant, in the mouth of a stuffed animal called a pointer. Another stuffed bird, called a Partridge, with a broken wing and seven leaden shots in its belly, and an embowelled quadruped called by Linnæus a hare. A few lectures upon these animals, and the method of slaughtering them, delivered by the same gentleman in black, will authorise and enable an inhabitant of Austin or Crutched Friars to boast of bagging his three brace and a half as boldly as Nimrod himself. Great events often spring from trivial causes. The magnificent scheme of the Joint-stock Anti-out-of-Town Company sprang from a record of the following well-known anecdote of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. "Father," said the son of the poet, "when I was last at Newcastle, I went down into a coal-pit."—"The more fool you, Tom!"-"Nay, Sir, surely it is gratifying to be able to say that one has been down into a coal-pit."-"Oh! I have no objection to your saying it." It only remains to add, that the physician of the Anti-out-of-Town Company is Doctor Street, the solicitor is Mr. Lane, and the standing counsel is Mr. Alley.

THE TEN THOUSAND AT THE SACRED MOUNT.*

THEY had seen Cynaxa's field,

Where they fought so vainly well

For though back in rout the foemen reel'd,

Yet the princely Cyrus fell!

Could it aught avail to them

That the golden eaglet fled?

He, who fought for Susa's diadem,

Was among Cynaxa's dead

Their pæan had drown'd the parting groan
Of him who struck for a grave or throne!

They had heard Euphrates rush

In the might of his own deep wave,
They had seen the infant Tigris gush
From his far Armenian cave:
They had seen the Ephesian pile,t
The hut of the mountaineer,

And fought through many a red defile

With the sling, the shaft, and spear:

Of their brave ranks some of the bravest lay

In a nameless grave of foreign clay.

Underneath the snow-born pines

Of the wild Carduchian hills,

They had thought of their country's wines
By the foeman's icy rills :

At the eagle's scream they had thought

On the nightingales of home :

"Could such," they had ask'd, "be the lure that wrought

Upon Greeks from Greece to roam?"

As they thought of the hour, when they blindly sold
Ten thousand swords for a stranger's gold.

*So called by Xenophon and Arrian, in addition to its local name of Theche. + The royal standard of Persia. It was seen upon a neighbouring eminence after

the battle.

The temple of the Ephesians of Diana, to whom Xenophon had vowed an offering, which, upon his return to Greece, he paid.

-They are scaling Theche's side

Their van is on Theche's brow

What means the pause of the martial tide,

And the earthquake-cry below?

To the sword the tired arm glanced,

And the languid foot trod proud;

Over each worn cheek the stern blood danced,
Like the fire-flash over the cloud;

The hero woke in each weary man

For they deem'd the foe* was upon their van!

On they rush'd as to the fight,

But it was no battle-word;

For "the Sea! the Sea!" from the mountain's height

In a thousand shouts was beard!

"The Sea! the Sea !"-that cry

Seem'd the end of toils and fears;
And, of all that host, not a freeman's eye
But was dim with rapturous tears,
As he saw from the sacred Mount again,
Like a line of blue cloud, the distant main!

At the shout, the eagle swung

From his eiry far away,

And the Colchiant pheasant sprung

From his dark wood to the day!-

All bright fell the westering sun

On the warriors' moving arms:

By file upon file the height was won,
Till an Army's glad alarms

Arose-as if life and liberty

Were in one far glimpse of a stranger sea!

It was long ere the echoes were still

That around and afar replied

Long, ere on the Sacred Hill

The shouts of a myriad died.

Then rose the full tones of a lyre,
And a young voice swell'd the sound
Every eye through its tears shot fire,

As the warriors throng'd around:
They lean'd on their spears in a tranced ring,
Mute as the Nine round the Delphic king.

'Twas a pale Greek girl, whose hand
There stray'd the deep chords among,
And who pour'd in the stranger's land
The soul of her country's song.

Light was wan to the dark of her eye,
As it flash'd on the distant sea;

She swept the strings, though her breast throbb'd high,

With a hand all firm and free;

And rich was the voice, and proud the strain,

She gave to the winds of the Euxine main.

*So great was the tumult, that Xenophon thought it necessary to bring up the rearward cavalry, under the impression that the van had been attacked.

It may not be generally known, that the pheasant derives its name from the Phasis, a river of Colchia. The Argonauts are said to have introduced it into Europe. Colchia lay between the army and the sea.

It is no inconsistency to introduce a Grecian female at such a time and place : several are known to have accompanied the ten thousand through all the difficulties and dangers of their celebrated retreat.