of you, have seen what I have read a description of, Kemble and Mrs.
Siddons in Macbeth, with more gold and silver plastered on their
doublets than would have kept an honest family in butchers' meat and
flannel from year's end to year's end! I am informed, (now mind, I
do not vouch for the fact), but I am informed that all such
extravagant idleness is to be done away with here. Lady Macbeth is
to have a plain quilted petticoat, a cotton gown, and a MOB CAP (as
the court parasites call it;--it will be well for them if, one of
these days, they don't wear a mob cap--I mean a WHITE CAP, with a MOB
to look at them); and Macbeth is to appear in an honest yeoman's drab
coat, and a pair of black calamanco breeches. Not SALAmanca; no, nor
TALAVERA neither, my most Noble Marquess; but plain, honest, black
calamanco stuff breeches. This is right; this is as it should be.
MOST THINKING PEOPLE, I have heard you much abused. There is not a
compound in the language but is strung fifty in a rope, like onions,
by the Morning Post, and hurled in your teeth. You are called the
mob; and when they have made you out to be the mob, you are called
the SCUM of the people, and the DREGS of the people. I should like
to know how you can be both. Take a basin of broth--not CHEAP SOUP,
MR. WILBERFORCE--not soup for the poor, at a penny a quart, as your
mixture of horses' legs, brick-dust, and old shoes, was denominated--
but plain, wholesome, patriotic beef or mutton broth; take this,
examine it, and you will find--mind, I don't vouch for the fact, but
I am told--you will find the dregs at the bottom, and the scum at the
top. I will endeavour to explain this to you: England is a large
EARTHENWARE PIPKIN; John Bull is the BEEF thrown into it; taxes are
the HOT WATER he boils in; rotten boroughs are the FUEL that blazes
under this same pipkin; parliament is the LADLE that stirs the hodge-
podge, and sometimes -. But, hold! I don't wish to pay MR. NEWMAN
{29} a second visit. I leave you better off than you have been this