Belgravia (Volume 14); A London Magazine (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1871. Excerpt: ... I will wager that Mr. Babbage the mathematician is a thoroughgoing Liberal. I know that he was one thirty years ago, when he ventilated his celebrated proposition for utilising all the church steeples as means of conveying letters and parcels from one end of the United Kingdom to the other. When Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed King of Italy, I daresay that Mr. Babbage was glad; when Garibaldi entered Naples, I daresay that he was gladder; when General Cadorna and the Italian troops entered Rome, he may have been gladdest. Perhaps he is on intimate terms with the Marquis d' Azeglio; very probably he corresponds with Padre Secchi, that most enlightened and most liberal of Jesuit astronomers.* Yet Mr. Babbage cannot hear a wandering musician from Leather-lane begin to grind the first bars of ' Stridi la Vampa' without rushing into the street to call a policeman. For this he has been many a time and oft branded by the unthinking with a repute for churlishness and hard-heartedness; whereas his nerves, and not his heart, should have been held responsible. The hatred of the late John Leech for all kinds of street noises attained the proportion at last almost of mental disease. I was looking through some back volumes of Punch the other day, and noticed that the caricaturist's feelings are in the respect I mention extended to the barking of dogs in the full moon, to the strains of volunteer bands, and to the crying of shrimps by the Brighton fish-fags. Against Italian organ and hurdy-gurdy players, and against the German 'green-baize' bands, as poor Albert Smith used to call them--the Teutonic minstrels have disappeared of late; perhaps they joined those Prussian military bands who in bitter irony struck up ' La Marseillaise, ' and yelled 'Der Kaiser 1st da, ' when Napoleon surrendered at Sedan...