BOGIE ALBION.

IT can scarcely be considered to be a
profound secret, that a certain abstraction,
known as Albion, has always been held in
ugly estimation by a country which (not to
say more than can be helped) may be found
by the curious traveller at something less
than a hundred miles to the east of Dover.
All the world must have heard of Albion the
Perfidious, of Bogie Albion. Survey mankind,
not exactly as Doctor Samuel bids us from
China to Peru, but Gallically from Dunquerque
to the Pyrenees, and the air will be found
re-echoing with the old eternal din. Not
only Albion the perfidious; but, Albion the
greedy, the cruel, and the rapacious: Albion,
that gorges itself to inconvenience with rosbif,
bifstik, and portère: Albion, that takes its
wife to market and fair with halters about
her neck, and sells her for what she will
fetch: Albion, that keeps bags and ingots of
gold in absurd quantities in cellars under
every house, all ready for the marshals and
colonels of the invading army when the great
sack comes: Albion that has been lucky
enough to produce one great poet of the
name of Williams, and who holds out such
encouragement to ability and steady
perseverance, that the humblest in the land may
one day rise, not so much to the rank of
peer or prime minister, but even to the giddy
elevation of Lor Maire: Albion, whose affair
at Waterloo was, to say the least of it,
doubtful; who is now clearly decadent, and
certainly weak in that arm of the marine.
This is Bogie Albion.

This is most ingenious modelling; a lay
figure cleverly done. So do youngsters, in
the frosty season, build up artfully a huge
snow-man, cut him, and shape and make him
as ugly as they can conveniently, and then
unreasonably set to hard and fast demolishing
of him. So, too, in those days, when old
crones were supposed to be riding brooms,
and were liable to be "swum," or be
otherwise ingeniously tortured, used waxen figures
be moulded, and then set to melt before a
slow fire. Very much like this, is the treatment
of poor Bogie Albion.

Not indeed that the perfidious one comes
forward in this matter herself, with perfectly
clean hands. It must not be hushed up
that there has existed a corresponding
abstraction, or pure French Bogie; but he
has gone long since: some time before that
entente cordiale which is still within the
memory of man; before the Russian war;
when there was the double income tax, and
the curious brotherhood, and the drinking
healths, and the alliance note-paper, with the
flags entwined, and Partant pour la Syrie.
Bogie Frenchman disappeared a little before
that; and it certainly appears only proper
reciprocity that Bogie Albion should be
rubbed out, or knocked to pieces like the
snow figures. The sports that celebrate the
glorious fifth of November are found to be
feeble. Even the Guy palls. The pomps
which usher in the coming to his throne of
the greatest personage in the realm— we
allude to the Lor Maire— have lost their old
sweet savour. The day for all stuffed shams
is passing by. Let, then, the diverting
quintain solace the free hours of imperators and
ex-ministers; but let not poor Bogie Albion
be set up for the whole nation to play the
game with.

Nobody can deny, even if he were so
minded, that there has been a real,
downright French Bogie, made by our own
hands, and treated unhandsomely, according
to the mood; which gives rise irresistibly
(but parenthically) to this curious question,
Whether every nation, of whatsoever kind
or quality, must not of necessity make to
itself some sort of Bogie, which it may pillory
and pelt with eggs, and other unpleasant
matter? which thus becomes vent salve or
easing pipe for the passions of the distilled
rascality of our planet? If there be, as there
undoubtedly is, the mumbo-jumbo, or golden
calf worship, why not the other extreme?
But this by the way. You will see in the
fine old caricatures, coloured so beautifully
by Mr. Gilray and by Mr. Rowlandson the
most ridiculous, laughter-moving conceptions,
which hit the Frenchmen pretty hard, and
not too delicately.

But was he not fair game, this rascally
fellow hard by, that lived upon soup and
nourished designs against England's liberties,
and the glorious and immortal bulwarks of
civil and religious freedom? Was he not
the natural enemy of every man, woman,
and child within the blessed realm? In