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scorn and vanity-which are in fact but luminous works on arts, trades, much the same; for contempt is no- and sciences, natural history, and asthing but egotism turned sour— for the tronomy, all for the use of children requisite supply, I say, of our social from three years old to seven, intera wants (Reviews, Anecdotes of Living woven with their own little biograAuthors, Table-talk, and such like phies and nursery journals, to the

exprovender,) it will suffice if I hereby clusion of Goody Two Shoes, as faa confess, that with rare exceptions these vouring superstition, by one party ; friends of mine were all born and bred and of Jack the Giant-killer, as a susbefore the birth of Common Sense by picious parody on David and Goliah, the obstetric skill of Mr Locke, nay, by the other. prior to the first creation of intellectual Far, far around, where'er my eye-balls Light in the person of Sir Isaac New- stray, ton—which latter event (we have Mr By Lucifer ! 'tis all one milky way! Pope's positive assurance of the fact) Or, as Propria Quæ Maribus, speaking may account for its universal and (more prophetico, et proleptice,) of the equable diffusion at present, the Light Irradiators of future (i. e. our) Times not having had time to collect itself long ago observed, they are common, into individual luminaries, the future quite a commou thing! suns, moons, and stars of the mundus Sunt commune. Parens, Authorque ; Ina intelligibilis. This, however, may be fans, Adolescens ; hoped for on or soon after the year Dux; Exlex; bifrons; Bos, Fur, Sus 1870, which, if my memory does not

atque Sacerdos. fail me, is the date apocalyptically de- So far, at least, you will allow me duced by the Reverend G. S. Faber, to have made out my position. But if for the commencement of the Millen- by a dark age you mean an age connium.

cerning which we are altogether in But though my prudential reserve the dark ; and as, in applying this to on these points must subtract from

our own, the Subject and object, we my forces numerically, this does not and the age become identical and abate my reliance on the sufficing commutable terms; I bid adieu to all strength of those that remain, No! reasoning by implication, to all leger. with confidence and secular pride I af- demain of 'inferential logic, and at firm, there is no age you could sug- once bring notorious facts to bear out gest, the characteristic of which is not my assertion. Could Hecate herself, to be found in the present that we churning the night-damps for an eyeare the quintessence of all past ages, salve, wish for an age more in the dark rather than an age of our own. You respecting its own character, than we recommend, you say, the Dark Ages; have seen exemplified in our next-door and that the present boasts to be the neighbour, the Great Nation, when, contrary. Indeed ? I appeal then to on the bloodless altar of Gallic freethe oracle that pronounces Socrates dom, she took the oath of peace and the most enlightened of men, because good-will to all mankind,

and abjured he professed himself to be in the dark. all conquests but those of reason? Or The converse, and the necessary truth in the millions throughout the contiof the converse, are alike obvious : nent, who believed her? Or than in Besides, as already hinted, in time all the two component parties in our own light must needs be in the dark, as illustrious isle, the one of whom hailhaving neither reflection nor absorp- ed her revolution as “a stupendous tion ; yet may, nevertheless, retain its monument of human wisdom and huprenomen without inconsistency, by man happiness ;” and the other calå slight change in the last syllable, by culated on its speedy overthrow by an a mere—for “ed" read “ing.' For act of bankruptcy, to be brought about whatever scruples may arise as to its or accelerated by a speculation in asbeing an enlightened age, there can signats, corn, and Peruvian bark? Or be no doubt that it is an enlightening than in the more recent constitutional one-an era of enlighteners, from the genius of the Peninsula Gas Light Company to the dazzling What time it rose, o'er-peering, from beIlluminati in the Temple of Reason hind, not forgetting the diffusers of light the mountainous experience, high apfrom the Penny-Tract-Pedlary, nor heaped the numberless writers of the small, of Gallic legislation

and “ taught by others' harms,” a and military success. In each case, very ungallic respect for the more an- a priori, the thing was possible, nay, cient code, vulgarly called the Ten probable ; at each meeting the asserCommandments, left the lands as it tion passed nem. con. though there found them, content with excluding were eye-witnesses, if not pars-maxitheir owners owners of four parts out mists present-and both were so much of five, at least, the church and nobi- in earnest, that I could not find it in lity—from all share in their represen- my heart' to disbelieve either. But tation? Or when the same genius, this is a digression. Or it may be the emblem and vice-gerent of the printed as a parenthesis. All close present age in Spain, poising the old thinkers, you know, are apt to be paindigenous loyalty with the newly- renthetic. imported state-craft, secured to the One other point, and I conclude. monarch the revenue of a caliph, with You are a mighty man for parallel the power of a constable ? But Pied- passages, Dick!

a very ferret in huntmont! but Naples-the Neapolitans ! ing out the pedigree and true parentthe age of patriotism, the firm, the age of a thought, phrase, or image. disinterested-the age of good faith So far from believing in equivocal geand hard fighting-of liberty or death! neration, or giving credit to any idea -yea! and the age of newspapers as an Autochthon, i.e. as self-sprung and speeches in Britain, France, and out of the individual brain, or natale Germany—the uncorrupted I mean ; solum, whence (like Battersea cabba(and the rest, you know, as mere ges, Durham mustard, Stilton cheese, sloughs, rather than a living and com- &c.) it took its market name, I verily ponent part, need not be taken into suspect you of the heresy of the Prethe calculation) were of the same Adamites ! Nay, I would lay a wager opinion ! A dream for Momus to wake that the Thesis for your Doctor's Deout of with laughing !

gree, should you ever descend from But enough! You are convinced on your correctorship of typical errata to this point,-at least you retract your that of misprints in the substance, objection. And now what else? Does would be: quod fontes sint nullibi. In my history require, in the way of self-defence, therefore, by warrantable correspondency, a time of wonders, a anticipation,-a pregnant principle, revolutionary period ? Does it demand Richard ! by virtue of which, (as you a non-descript

age? Should it, above yourself urged at the time) the demaall (as I myself admit that it should,) gogues that threw open the election of be laid in an age “ without a name, the Mayor of Garrett, hitherto vested and which, therefore, it will be chá. in the blackguards of Brentford exclurity in me to christen by the name of sively, to the blackguards of the counthe Polypus? An age, where the in- try at large, exposed us to an invasion most may be turned outside -- and from the aristocracies of Tunis and “ Inside out and outside in," I at one Algiers ! N.B. Clarendon and the time intended for the title of my his. Quarterly are of the same opiniontory-where the very tails, inspired prospectively, I say, for informers, by the spirit of independence, shoot and informatively for the reader, i out heads of their own? (Thanks, make known the following: with three times three, to Èllis and Some ten or twelve years ago, as Trembley, the first historiographers of the Vassals of the Sun, i.e. the Bodies, the Polypus realm, for this beauti- count their time, being in the world ful emblem and natural sanction of of spirits, as above mentioned, and in the SOVEREIGNTY OF The People!) the Parnassian quarter, in literary All, all are to be found in the age wé chit-chat with Lucian, Aristophanes, live in—whose attributes to enumerate Swift, Rabelais, and Moliere, over a would exhaust the epithets of an Or- glass of green gooseberry wine, (since phic hymn, and beggar the Gradus ad the departure of the last-named spirit, Parnassum !-All, all, and half be- articles of French produce have been sides the feasability of which I first declared contraband in the spiritual learnt during the last war, at two pub- Parnassia)— I read them a rough prelic dinners severally given, one by Scot- existent, or as we say here, copy, of tish, and the other by Irish patriots, Maxilian. When who should be standwhere each assigned to their country, ing behind my chair, and peeping over men three-fourths of our whole naval my shoulder, (I had a glimpse of his face when it was too late, and I never nality had suffered on more than one saw a more Cervantic one) but a spirit former occasion, was part in fault ! from Thought-land, (North Germany But, be this as it may, so it chanced, I should say) who, it seems, had taken however, that before I had put a single a trip thither, during the furlow of a line on paper, (my time being, indeed, magnetic crisis, into which his Larva occupied in determining which of ten had been thrown by Nic, senior, or twelve pre-existents I should tranM. D.* and a Mesmerist still in great scribe first) out came the surreptitious practice. Well! there would have duplicate, with such changes in names, been no harm in this, for in such scene of action, thought, images, and cases it was well known, that the spi- language, as the previous associations, rit, on its return to the body, used to and local impressions of the unweetforget all that had happened to it du- ing plagiarist had clothed my ideas in. ring its absence, and became as igno- But what I take most to heart, it so rant of all the wondrous things it had nearly concerning the credit of Great seen, said, heard and done, as Balaam's Britain, is, that it came out in another ass. rivetat d'aū ovos ó övos éçayyan.3 óuevoso country, and in high Dutch ! I foreBut unluckily, and only a few months see what my anticipator's compatriots before, Mr Van Ghert, (who, as privy will say—that admitting the facts as counsellor to the King of the Nether- here related, yet the Anselmus is no lands, ought to have known better) mere transcript or version, but at the had, by metaphysical skill, discovered lowest a free imitution of the Maxilian: the means of so softening the waxen or rather that the English and German tablet in the patient's cranium, that it works are like two paintings by differnot only received, but retained, the ent masters from the same sketch, the impression from the movements of the credit of which sketch, secundum leges soul, during her trance, re-suggesting et consuetudines mundi corpuscularis, them to the patient sooner or later, must be assigned to the said Frederic sometimes as dreams, and sometimes Miller by all incarnate spirits, held at as original fancies. Thus it chanced, this present time in their senses, and that the great idea, and too many of as long as they continue therein ; but the sub-ideas, of my ideal work awoke, which I shall claim to myself, if ever in the consciousness of this Prussian I get out of them. And so farewell, or Saxon, Frederic Miller is the dear Corrector ! for I must now adname, he goes by soon after the just myself to retire bowing, face or return of the spirit to its old charubers frontispiece, towards THE READER, in his brain. "Alas! my unfortunate with the respect due to so impartial intimacy with a certain well-known and patient an Arbiter from the “ Thief of Time,” for which my origi

AUTHOR.

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MAXILIAN.

Flight I. It was on a Whitsunday afternoon— water-rays of a trundled mop, and the clocks striking five, and while the furnished extempore-on the spur of last stroke was echoing in the now the occasion, as we say—a glorious empty churches-and just at the turn scramble to the suburban youngsters, of one of the open streets in the out- that were there making or marring skirts of Dublin-that a young man, this double holiday. But what words swinging himself round the corner, can describe the desperate outburst, ran full butt on a basket of cakes and the blaze of sound, into which the apples, which an old barrow-wife was beldam owner of the wares exploded ! offering for sale; and with such force, or the “ boil and bubble” of abuse and that the contents shot abroad, like the imprecation, with which the neigh

See “ Archiv des thierischen Magnetismus,” edited by Professor Eschenmiyer and Co. I mentioned one of Dr Nic's cases, with a few of Doctors Kieser's and Nasse's, and of Mr Van Ghert's, to Lemuel Gulliver ; but I found him strangely increa dulous. He (he said) had never seen any thing like it. But what is that to the pur. pose? What does any one man's experience go for, in proving a negative at least? I could not even learn from him, that he had ever met with a single Meteorolithe, or sky-stone, on its travels from the volcanos of Jupiter, or the moon, to our earth.,

bour gossips, starting from their gin- fect till it had reached its final destigerbread and whisky stands, and clus- nation, the youth's own meatus auditering round him, astounded the ears torius ; and that for others, the scold's and senses of the ill-starred aggressor ! passionate outcry did not ver bully difA tangle-knot of adders, with all its fer from the usual outcries of a scold heads protruded towards him, would in a passion : Yet there was a somenot have been more terrific. Reeling thing in the yell and throttle of the with surprise and shame, with the basket-woman's voice so horrific, that look and gesture of a child, that, ha- the general laugh, which had spread ving whirled till it was giddy-blind, is round at the young man's expense, now trying to stop itself. he held out was suspended. The passengers halthis purse, which the grinning scolded, as wonder-struck ; and when they with one snatch transferred to her own moved on, there was a general mur, pocket. At the sight of this peace- mur of disgust and aversion. offering, the circle opened, and made The student MAXILIAN-for he it way for the young man, who instant- was, and no other, who, following his ly pursued his course with as much nose, without taking counsel of his celerity as the fulness of the street, eyes, had thus plunged into conflict and the dread of a second mishap, with the old woman's wares- --though would permit. The flame of Irish he could attach no sense or meaning wrath soon languishes and goes out, to the words he heard, felt himself, when it meets with no fuel from re- nevertheless, seized with involuntary sistance. The rule holds true in ge- terror, and quickened his steps, to get neral. But no rule is of universal ap- as soon as possible out of the crowd, plication ; and it was far from being who were making their way to the verified by the offended principal in pleasure-gardens, the Vauxhall of the this affray. Unappeased, or calling in Irish metropolis, and whose looks and her fury only to send it out again con- curiosity converged towards him. His densed into hate, the implacable bel- anxious zig-zag, however, marked the dam hobbled after the youth, deter- desire of haste, rather than its attainmined that though she herself could ment: and still as he pushed and not keep up with him, yet that her winded through the press of the vacurses should, as long at least as her rious gay parties, all in holiday finery, throat and lungs could supply powder he heard a whispering and murmurfor their projection. Alternately push- ing, “ The poor young man! Out on ing her limbs onward, and stopping the frantic old hag !". The ominous not so much to pant as to gain a ful voice and the wicked looks which the crum for a more vehement scream, she beldam seemed to project, together continued to pursue her victim with with the voice and we are all, more “ vocal shafts,” as Pindar has it, or or less, superstitious respecting looks dos aspīvos épe Ta eno Bass ise. spitting fire like had given a sort of sentimental turn to a wet candle-wick, as Aristophanes ! this ludicrous incident. The females

And well if this had been allan regarded the youth with increasing intemperance, a gust of grazy canker- sympathy: and in his well-formed ed old age, not worth recording. But, countenance, (to which the expression alas! these jets and flashes of execra- of inward distress lent an additional tion no sooner reached the ears of the interest,) and his athletic growth, they fugitive, but they became articulate found an apology, and, for the mosentences, the fragments, it seemed, of ment, a compensation, for the awk. some old spell, or wicked witch, wardness of his gait, and the more rhyme :

than most unfashionable cut of his Ay !-run, run, run,

clothes. Of flesh, off bone !

It can never be proved, that no one Thou Satan's son,

of the Seven Sleepers was a tailor by Thou Devil's own!

trade; neither do I take on myself to Into the glass

demonstrate the affirmative. But this Pass

I will maintain, that a tailor, disen-
The glass ! the glass,
The crystal glass !

thralled from a trance of like duration,

with confused and fragmentary recolThough there is reason to believe lections of the fashions at the time he that this transformation of sound, like fell asleep, blended with the images the burst of a bomb, did not take ef- hastily abstracted from the dresses that

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passed before his eyes when he first the vine pencilling with delicate shareopened them, might, by dint of con- dows the brow of a projecting rock of jecture, have come as near to a modish purest Alabaster, that here gleamed suit, as the ambulatory artist had done, through from behind the tendrils, and who made his circuit among the re- here glittered as the interspace. cesses of Macgillicuddy's Reeks, and Yes, gentle Reader !--the diction, for whose drapery the person of our similes, and metaphors, of the preluckless student did at this present ceding paragraph, are somewhat mottime perform the office of Layman.* ley and heterogene. I am myself A pepper-and-salt frock, that might aware of it. But such was the impresbe taken for a greatcoat,—but whe- sion it was meant to leave. A har. ther docked, or only out-grown, was mony that neither existed in the oriopen to conjecture; a black satin ginal, nor is to be found in any porwaistcoat, with deep and ample flaps, traiture thereof, presents itself in the rimmed with rose-colour embroidery; exact correspondence of the one to the green plush smallclothes, that on one other. My friend Panourgos, late of limb formed a tight compress on the the Poultry Counter, but at present in knee joint, and on the other buttoned the King's Bench,-a descendant of midway round the calf of a manly and the Rabelaisean Panurge, but with a well-proportioned leg. Round his neck trick of Friar John in his composia frilled or laced collar with a ribbon tion-acted on this principle. He round it, sufficiently alien indeed from sent an old coat to be dyed; the dyer the costume below, yet the only ar- brought it home blue and black: he ticle in the inventory and sum total of beat the dyer black and blue : and this, his attire that harmonized, or, as our he justly observed, produced a harpainters say, was in some keeping- mony. Discordia concors!-the motto, with the juvenile bloom, and mark, gentle Reader ! prefixed by the masgentle Reader! I am going to raise my ters of musical counterpoint, to the style an octave or more]—and ardent gnarled and quarrelsome notes which simplicity of his face; or with the au- the potent fist of the Royal Amazon, burn ringlets that tempered the lustre our English Queen Bess, boxed into of his ample forehead !-Like those love and good neighbourhood on her fleecy cloudlets of amber, which no own virginals. Besides, I wished to writer or lover of sonnets but must leave your fancy a few seconds longer some time or other, in some sweet in the tyring-room. And here she Midsummer Night's Dream of poetic comes! The whole figure of the stuor sentimental sky-gazing, have seen dent-She has dressed the character to astray on the silver brow of the celes- a hair.-You have it now complete be. tial Dian! Or as I myself, once on a fore your mind's eye, as if she had time, in a dell of lazy Sicily, down a caught it flying. stony side t of which a wild vine was And in fact, with something like creeping tortuous, saw the tendrils of the feeling of one flying in his sleep,

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• The jointed image, or articulated doll, as large, in some instances, as a full-grown man or woman, which artists employ for the arrangement and probation of the drapery and attitudes of the figures in their paintings, is called Layman. POSTSCRIFT. Previously to his perusal of the several particulars of the student's tout-ensemble, I am anxious to inform the reader, that having looked somewhat more heedfully into my documents, I more than suspect that the piece, since it came from the hands of the Sartor of Macgillicuddy, had been most licentiously interpolated by genii of more mischievous propensities—the boni socii of the Etruscan and Samothracian breed ; the “ Robin Good Fellows” of England; the 6 Good Neighbours” of North Britain ; and the “ Practical Jokers” of all places, but of special frequency in clubs, schools, and universities.

+ The author asks credit for his having, here and elsewhere, resisted the temptation of substituting “whose” for “ of which”—the misuse of the said pronoun relative “ whose,” where the antecedent neither is, nor is meant to be represented as, personal or even animal, he would brand, as one among the worst of those mimicries of poetic diction, by which imbecile writers fancy they elevate their prose-would, but that, to his vexation, he meets with it, of late, in the compositions of men that least of all need such artifices, and who ought to watch over the purity and privileges of their mothertongue with all the jealousy of high-priests, set apart by nature for the pontificate. Poor as our language is, in terminations and inflections significant of the genders, to destroy the few it possesses, is most wrongful.