ook place on these occasions between him and John Scott, Lord
Clonmel, who was at the period Chief Justice of the King's Bench. In
addressing the court in his own defence, Magee had occasion to allude to
some public character, who was better known by a familiar designation. The
official gravity of Clonmel was disturbed; and he, with bilious asperity
reproved the printer, by saying,--"Mr. Magee, we allow no nicknames in
this court." "Very well, _John Scott_," was the reply.
H.S.S.
* * * * *
_A Village Hampden_.--In the churchyard of one of the parishes of Walsall,
Staffordshire, is the following epitaph on a person named Samuel Wilks,
who appears, like other persons of his name, to have been a great stickler
for the rights of the people:--"Reader, if thou art an inhabitant of the
Foreign of Walsall, know that the dust beneath thy feet was imprisoned in
thy cause, because he refused to incorporate the poor-rates of the Foreign
of Walsall and those of the Borough of Walsall. His resistance was
successful. Reader, the benefit is thine."
* * * * *
_Difference between a Town and a Village_.--The other night it was warmly
contested in the Reform debate in the House of Commons, whether Bilston
and Sedgeley, in Staffordshire, were towns or villages. Mr. Croker spoke
of the "village of Bilston," and the "rural district of Sedgeley," but Sir
John Wrottesley maintained that the right hon. gentleman would find
nothing in Bilston that would give him any idea of sweet Auburn. "He would
find a large market-town in the parish of Wolverhampton, filled not with
trees and waving foliage, but with long chimneys and smoking steam-engines.
The time was also beyond his memory when Sedgeley was a rural district.
The right hon. gentleman would find there no mossy fountains, no bubbling
brooks; the only thing at all like them which he could find there would be
the torrents of boiling water which the steam-engines perpetually
discharged."
* * * * *
_Dutch Disgust_.--You might seek through all London to find such a piece
of furniture as a spitting-box. A Dutchman who was very uncomfortable for
the want of one, declared, with great indignation, that an Englishman's
only spitting-box was his stomach.
* * * * *
_Awkward Honour_.--A medical gentleman has written a letter to Sir Henry
Halford on Chole
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