they destroy the body, and impair for a season our social relations. But the demon of Priestcraft, which arms a populace against itself, and cries-" Murder! for the soul's sake-Poison in the name of Christ!" spares neither soul nor body, and strikes at the roots of happiness, wisdom, and innocence with the doubly-poisoned shaft of hypocrisy and malice.

DECEMBER, 1850.

THE ABOMINATION OF PROCTORIAL DUTIES.

A HINT TO THE UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONERS.

TAE recent case of Mr. Fenwick, a Proctor at Cambridge, who was fined the other day for exceeding his duty, by molesting a modest and virtuous young woman through a mistake, in the discharge of his most degrading office, may we hope, lead to the total abolition of University Proctors. They do not prevent or preclude one atom of vice. They only make it more hideous; because, without prevention, they render more debasing the immoral practices going on in our Universities. What an office for a clergyman to ransack the slums for errant youth! But we fear that many of them like it. There is a prurient excitement in the licensed chase which is agreeable to the minds of some of these men. To many such clerical beadles may be applied the words of Lear-taunting them with a passion for that which it is their office to crush, vex, and oppress. At any rate we have known their "dignity" perverted to a sad extent, and in a peculiar way. We have never observed that young men who have run the gauntlet of London life are more depraved than the Oxonian or Cantab. But we

have observed that they are more discreet in their vices and less reckless in their choice; whilst we can remember facts which prove that a "degree" in profligacy is sometimes taken at the Universities, resulting entirely from this mistaken system.

Another subject, too delicate for us to investigate, concerning the physical as well as moral welfare of the flower of the British youth, remains. It is so important that we regret we cannot say more. Whilst, however, we do not wish to see France followed here in her sanitary regulations, we conceive that there is a juste milieu; and we reprehend that mean hypocrisy and paltry pretence which assume the enforcement of strict morality, at which gownsmen laugh; as such a system only enhances, by the excitement of contraband pleasures, the gathering of those bitter poisons and ashen fruits whose curse may linger to the end of life. Let the vice which proctors persecute both punish and protect itself. The result of the present system is only to degrade the passions to the very lowest; to dally with an evil that is not stopped; to shock propriety, and to destroy health. It is an African slave blockade-about as useful, as sensible, as creditable and beneficial, in a negative, and as injurious, in a positive sense.

If a young man do anything which, in common life, would be considered incorrect, vicious, or degraded; if he offend public decency or public morals; if he be considered a black sheep and a flagrant bad example-let him be banished from the University. Let the College porters and authorities prevent immorality in Colleges. For the rest, let it not be uncovered in so gross a manner.

OURSELVES AND OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

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WRITING, as we do, a little out of the common line of Journalism—that is to say, irrespective of all but conviction, without looking to any interest, and guided alone by our own free will and pleasure-we are delighted to find so many established Journals not only adopting our sentiments, but our very expressions, unconsciously as it were, and with a frankness of omission with respect to the little source and fount of their broad river of opinion, which adds amusement to our proud satisfaction.

The little MIRROR OF THE TIME casts its bread upon the waters, and finds it again, after many days, no floating waif, but the acknowledged prize of others. Bon! So let it be. We wrap ourselves. in the mantle of content, and find the cutting frost refreshing as it imparts vigour and resolution to our frame. We observe, with pleasure, the birth of another contemporary, in the shape of a cheap weekly periodical. There is room enough and to spare for all. The veteran Leigh Hunt has given his name and pen to a work of which two numbers have already appeared.* It is written in a peculiar style, and may be termed the pleasing gossip of letters. Whilst nothing can be more antagonistic to our belief and principles than the political and social views of this Journal, except so far as it includes the names of progression, kindness, and philanthropy, we hail with satisfaction a paper which promises, at any rate, respectable literary food, much valuable information, and a good deal of sprightly, as well as learned writing;

This Journal is since given up. Illiterate trash is more popular by far than either creditable matter or lettered trifling.

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in place of the sickly anti-Shakesperian trash, the inane buffoonery, and the jam-making, bug-killing prescriptions of some of our cheap predecessors and contemporaries. Not that we quarrel with housewifery, but the twaddle linked with it, which is calculated to render impotent, we will not say vitiate, the public mind. As to the mischief that may be done by any fresh addition to the sickly philanthropy school, we apprehend that a crisis, now too late to avoid, is at hand, which will settle the question so effectually and so quickly, one way or the other, that a little more or less encouragement to disarm, exhibitionize, and give away, is of no consequence whatever.

Our

Nay, we are inclined to think that it is the very suddenness of our betrayal which may startle and save us. eyes may be opened by an operation alone. A blow may rouse us from our lethargy. As for peace, we should be very happy to see lions and tigers born without claws or incisores-in fact with the mildest dental appurtenances possible; but until then we are not inclined to play speculative Van Amburgh to the tune of Pope's Messiah recited in a nasal twang in Exeter Hall, quoted in cheap information for the people, or made use of by greedy manufacturers, who are now pushed so hard themselves, and it serves them right, that they resort to every expedient in the "shop" and out of it, to under-sell and over-produce on the cheap market system, which is assisting in its own destruction under the pressure of debt, taxation, and foreign competition.

We have spoken of progression, kindliness, and philanthropy in a way which may cause our readers to doubt our meaning. Do we wish for a dark age? No! for then we should politically desire to be Roman Catholics. Have we no kindly sympathies? Ay, with all humanity; but with

British humanity first. Will any deny patriotism to include all public virtue? Alas! in this day it appears to be the rarest quality in the breast of a legislature. But a nation, which strips off her feathers to warm the callow brood of other climes, will next offer her breast to the assailant, and will soon lie a prey to every pouncing kite in the name of ingratitude.

It is curious to observe what odd extremes meet in the ruinous quackery of the times. The excellent man of letters, who knows nothing of calculation, who is a child in money matters and technicalities, runs agape after science, and is beguiled by mere words, such as "Peace," "Free Trade," and other charming abstractions. Utterly ignorant of practical facts, this good-natured simplicity buys his gross of green spectacles in the world's fair, and fancies that it is governed by a clique of letters, although selfish men will not acknowledge it, and reduces to dingy prose the poetical fictions of the immaterial Shelley.

Had Goldsmith lived in these days, to combine the absurdities of Mrs. Nickleby with a genius sufficiently great to escape the laureate bays, he would have rioted in all these fatal concetti, against which the manly voice of Johnson would have been raised. "An universal exhibition, sir ?—A concourse of British asses, with foreign wild beasts for the ruin of home trade and produce. Sir, an Englishman should have no universality. If they had proposed an exhibition amongst ourselves, then it would have been a harmless but unnecessary job; but it is not wanted. All England, sir, is an exhibition; a pretty exhibition we shall make of it to Frenchmen."

We can fancy the rejoinder of the shallow but clever Boswell, who would certainly have been in favour of the