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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
of an omnibus turning a sharp corner upon a rough pavement . The operation is too jarring for kindly wishes and greetings at the moment . We do not at all regret that the slow medium of the press , through which we communicate with our readers , compels us to be anticipative , and will also compel them to be retrospective . No , not though it brings us again into comparison with our friend the bellman , whose good
wishes last all the week , from Christmas to New Year ' s Dayat least we hope they do ; for , as Cobbett used to say , " we cannot vouch for the fact . " Long imprisonment in Cockayne has impaired our personal knowledge of the country world ; end bellmen are defunct in London . Yet , " we cannot but remember such tinners were . " If the profession be gone down .
we hope that Corporation Reform will include its restoration . Newspapers will not do the bellman ' s business ; at any rate , till the stamp duties are off , and every man has his morning " Two-penny , " or " Three half-penny , " with his breakfast . The seven-penny of two days old is all too slow for the recovery of the lost child ; or for the ascent of Mr . Green , who leaves town with his balloon to-morrow ; or for the thousand other charities and joys of the bellman ' s province . Then his bell is so properly civic an instrument . The trumpet is aristocratic ; it belongs to heraldry , proclamations , the players , and the judges .
People give notice by " tuck of drum " in the north ; but that is barbarous and military . It is always horribly beaten , besides . The uncouth banging is actual torture to our ears , and cracks our own drums . But the bell , in a practised hand , ( Londoners must not jud ^ e by muffin or dustmen ; they are no artistes ) , is made to discourse , —not " eloquent music "
indeed , but a stately sort of clanging melody . There was a famous bellman at N , in our young days , whose figure rises every December to our imagination , and wishes us " merry Christmas , and happy New Year " in our dreams ; especially after the first mince pies of the season . He was the
very beau ideal ot the profession ; and " methinks I see him now , " ringing his bell a-deal . His portly figure aptly typified the entire corporation , of which lie was the outward and visible sign to the junior citizens . It was something between Hercules and Daniel Lambert . The exact colour of his robes has rather faded from our eyes ; and we hope to offend no city antiquary by our belief , that they were of a sobered and
somewhat dingy blue and violet , blending the Aldermanic Court and the Common Council in the drapery of his august person , which was itself a grand model for a mayor . He was too tall for the ample calimunco folds to impair the visible proportions of his huge frame ; and his nervous right arm was always at liberty , without marring the sculpturesque effect , to wield u bell that might well have served a parish church , and
Untitled Article
2 New Year .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1836, page 2, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2653/page/2/
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