ignorance of Almack's, "a club where Swift and Johnson used to meet, but I don't profess to be an antiquarian"—"Love and Algebra," one of the common scientific novels thumbed by coal-heavers and orange-women, very well for the common people—Every thing is taught them now by means of scientific novels: such as "Geological Atoms, or the Adventures of a Dustman"—Doubted very much whether English wheat is fit for any thing but the brute creation—Dark times of the 19th century—Six-hourly and half-daily newspapers—"apropos, as the hackney-coachmen say"—Turkey, one of the southern provinces of Russia—His Majesty Jonathan III. of Washington—The Emperor of India—The Burmese Republic—English the language of three-fourths of Asia, nine-tenths of North America, half Africa, and all the insular states in the South Seas—and England, that little kingdom, with a population of not more than forty millions, has had the honour of colonizing half the globe; but "these countries are our colonies no longer." Such are a few of the wonders of 2130! In the Dialogue is an admirable joke with a scientific street-sweeper and a learned beggar, who pleads necessitas non habet legem, and "embraces the profession of an operative mendicant." But here is a morceau:
Lady D.—Ah! Lord A.! Mr. C.! most unexpected persons both! I heard only yesterday that one of you was in Greenland, and the other in Africa. What false reports they circulate!
Lord A.—The reports were true not long ago, and I believe we returned about the same time. You, Lady D., have been also travelling, I believe.
Lady D.—Yes, we were out of England in the winter. Our physician commanded a warmer climate for Lord D. so we took a villa on the Niger, and afterwards spent a short time at Sackatoo.
Mr. C.—I suppose you found it full of English?
Lady D.—Oh, quite full—and such a set! We knew hardly any of them. In fact, we did not go there for society. We met a few pleasant people, Australians; the Abershaws, the Hardy Vauxes, and Sir William and Lady Soames.
Mr. C.—Did you go by the new Tangier and Timbuctoo road?
Lady D.—Yes, we did, and we found it excellent. By the bye, Lord A., to digress to a different latitude, how did you succeed in your last excursion to the North Pole?
Lord A.—To tell you the truth, extremely ill; we had most improvidently taken with us scarcely enough of the solvent to work our way through the ice, and our concentrated essence of caloric was found to be of a very inferior quality. I shall try again next summer.
Lady D.—I believe we shall go to Spitzbergen ourselves.
Lord A.—I am happy to think that, in that case, I may perhaps have the pleasure of meeting you there on my return. I must go to the Pole, by the way of North Georgia: I am engaged to visit an Eskimaux friend.
Still more ludicrous are the following historical blunders:—One of the party asks how Napoleon is introduced in an historical novel of 1830? The reply is—"He and the Emperor Alexander of Russia are introduced dining with the King at Brighton. Napoleon quarrels with the two sovereigns, and challenges them to a personal encounter. Each claims the right of fighting by deputy. The King of England appoints his prime minister, the Duke of Wellington; the Emperor Alexander appoints Prince Kutusoff. The Duke of Wellington is to go out first, and is to meet Napoleon at Battersea Fields. There were open fields at Battersea: then: only think! open fields! I don't know how the duel ends—I am just in the midst of it—it is so interesting."
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