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THE ROCKING-HORSE.

THE Garden of the Tuileries,

As travell'd Britons know,
Midst goodly groves of orange trees,
Hath statues, white as snow.

One morning, Indolence my guide
This garden-ground I trod,
With maiden, tripping at my side,
Some four years old and odd.

With loving eyes, serenely sweet,
And happy, thoughtless words;
And lustrous face, and dancing feet,
And voice so like a bird's!

She spoke, and sombre thoughts grew bright-
She laugh'd-'twas sorrow's knell;

As wicked imps, 'tis said, take flight,
At sound of holy bell.

She prattled of each marble form,
So life-like in its air-
The hero in the battle-storm,
The beautiful, the fair.

Of cold Diana's placid face-
Of Shepherd with his flute-
And then the wondrous Centaur-race
Did touch the talker mute.

Her simple brain was overwrought
With Goddess, God, and King;
And like a shadow fell deep thought
Upon her marvelling.

(So walk'd she on, but who may tell
What forms she brought away-
To stand reveal'd at mem'ry's spell
And glad some distant day?

For lovely things that lie around
Our childhood's seeming night,

Come forth like buried art, new-found-
Fair Hebes, brought to light.)

Well, leisurely we bent our walk
Where constant plenty yields
Perennial store of dust and chalk,
To famed "Elysian Fields."

Now, ere you reach that happy plain,
Since, reader, you have eyes-

You can't but stare at statues twain

Of Herculean size;

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Paris, 1838.

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Doom'd" Louis Capet," stript of might-
Napoleon on the rock-

The Eighteenth Louis-Charles, a wight
Design'd for monkish frock.

And all like April sunbeams fled,
Save one, and one alone,
Spared from the exiled and the dead
To sit a brittle throne.

If thus, I thought, the lords of earth
Are but the toys of fate,

A passing ray their royal worth,

And shadows all their state

Let whosoever bridle Fame,

Turk, Frenchman, Grecian, Norse

East, west, north, south--the steed's the same

'Tis but a-Rocking-Horse!

Oct.-VOL. LIV. NO. CCXIV.

P

D. J.

ORTOLANS AND CHAMPAGNE.

"Scilicet uxorem cum alote, fidemque, et amicos,

Et genus, et formam, regina Pecunia donat:

Ac bene nummatum decorat Suadela, Venusque.”—Horat."

"How the deuce come I to be interested in a man's fortune, unless I am his steward or his tailor? Indeed, knowledge and genius are worth examining into; my understanding may be improved, or my imagination gratified; but why such a man's being able to eat ortolans and drink French wine is to recommend him to my esteem, is what I cannot readily conceive."-FOOTE'S KNIGHTS.

THIS is a shrewd question of our English Aristophanes, and it merits an answer. In undertaking an investigation of the matter, it is some comfort to be sure of the fact: for no one will doubt that riches are, in the abstract, an object of universal veneration in our isle; or that the aristocracy of wealth is as simply worshipped by Englishmen, as that of the herald's office.

Such being the fact, there must be a cause as universal as the effect; and, let Foote say what he pleases, we cannot doubt that there is some subtle connexion between a man and his money, which renders him the amiable, intelligent creature, which he is unanimously voted to be. Perhaps it is with riches as with electricity; and as the proximity of a body negatively electrified places, by induction, its neighbour in the opposite state of positive electricity, so the negative respectability, the vileness, corruption, and filthiness of the lucre itself, may, by a similar process, insinuate into its happy possessor a corresponding overdose of positive excellence. Without, however, relying too much on this analogy, which we confess is nothing more than a happy guess, let us proceed to inquire whether there may not be some more obvious reasons to account for the esteem in which the wealthy are held-reasons which will acquit plutidolatry of much of its imputed weakness. And first of all, it must occur to persons much used to such investigations, that the most inveterate worshippers of wealth are chiefly to be found among the seedy part of the community. A French officer once reproached his Swiss comrade with serving for pay, while he and his countrymen served for honour. "Yes," replied the other, "it is true; but every one fights for what he has not." So, too, is it with all our exertions; all objects of desire must be out of immediate possession; and all objects of admiration somewhat beyond our actual reach. Why, for instance, do women fall in love with a beard and moustaches, but because all the macassar oil in London (an article which, it has been said, made the hair grow on an old trunk) will not procure them such a commodity for their own faces and every point of female beauty on which the men dwell with the greatest delight, is precisely the point in which they have nothing themselves to boast. It is not a legitimate objection to this aphorism, that simile gaudet simili, or, as Martial better expresses it—

"Uxor pessima, pessimus maritus

Miror non bene convenire vobis :"

for this sympathy is by no means founded on esteem, there being for

the most part too much rivalry between the parties for hearty admiration. Like seeks like, not for liking, but on the Owenite principle of co-operation; and we very much doubt, maugre the name of the thing, whether Owen's parallelograms and harmony have so much to do with each other as their inventor imagined.

Further, every one is desirous of wealth, and generally puts forth all his energies in seeking to attain it. Every one likewise is apt to indulge in a sufficient self-esteem. What, then, is more natural than that the poor man who has laboured all his life to scrape a little money together, and laboured in vain, should imagine that he who has succeeded must be a very clever fellow? People, we are aware, will, in such cases, flatter their own self-love by publicly imputing their neighbour's well-doing to that ideal nonentity, good luck; but still in their heart of hearts they know to the contrary: and, if Sir Balaam himself " calls God's providence a lucky hit," his friends are seldom behindhand in attributing the matter to personal merits, derived from an instigation of another sort. Certain also it is that the poor do nothing but wonder at those who have crept into wealth; and wonder, as Zanga tells us, "is involuntary praise." Whenever, therefore, we see a poor devil with his threadbare coat buttoned tight over his no-shirt, who cringes, and fawns, and gives the wall to a snug, comfortable, well-dressed passer-by, his quondam intimate, we take it as a mere admission of the moral and intellectual powers of the man of wealth, a real knocking-under to superior adroitness and applicability. Money, then, is interesting as the sign of all the good qualities by which it has been accumulated; and a man's being "able to eat ortolans and drink French wine," if he be the architect of his own fortune, is a guarantee for his possessing all the knowledge and virtue which are sine qua non to the operation.

With respect to hereditary wealth, indeed, this motive cannot apply; and more especially they of the landed interest are very generally considered as better qualified to dissipate than to accumulate. We must look, therefore, a little further for the causes of squire worship. Wealth, in itself, is power, and power is an awful thing; else wherefore is the devil to be honoured for his burning throne?" But landed wealth besides its proper pecuniary influences, wields all the minor authorities of the law, hectors over pheasants and partridges, stops up by-paths, and opens carriage-roads for its own convenience, returns members to parliament, frightens parish-officers out of their propriety, and holds the vicar himself in respectful check; no wonder, therefore, that a man of acres is adored, though he be a fool or a sot; or that his agent or his gentleman's gentleman is propitiated through the whole vicinage of his possessions. Not, however, that we believe the connexion, in these cases, to be purely symbolical either of talent or of power. On the contrary, we hold that there is a real, though mystical, virtue in " the blunt," which passes, like the Barony of Arundel, with the fee simple, to each new possessor.

That wealth really does, like honours, change men's manners-that a saint in crape is really twice a saint in lawn-appears also with great clearness of evidence in the reports of police-offices, where dress tells so much in favour of the accused. The man who buys his clothes of a tailor, and on coming before the magistrate hands up his card to the bench, makes a much better impression upon justice, than he who deals

at Rag Fair, or trusts, like the lilies of the valley, to Providence, for his supply of decencies. And is not cleanliness, as has been well said, next to godliness? It is then but bare justice, that a clean shirt and yellow kids, should have some preliminary credit for the kindred virtues, over a tattered togary, with a face guiltless of soap, and on the worst possible terms with cold water? When the respectable delinquent, contrary to all probability, does turn out to have been a leetle to blame, when he has knocked up a whole parish with a false alarm of fireknocked off some half-hundred of knockers-and knocked down some half-dozen of police-(are they not paid by the public for being knocked down by the lieges?)-when he has moreover insulted the magistrate to his face, and laughed the law to scorn-still the prejudice in his favour retains its force; and, such is the virtue of his appearance, that we never heard of his having been sent to the tread-mill, like a vulgar rioter.

We have read of a buck, who, having thrown a tavern-waiter out of the window, ordered him to be put into the bill; and there are persons who attribute the immunity of well-dressed ill-doers, to their being able to pay for the damage they have occasioned. This, we admit, is in the strict constitutional spirit of the good old Saxon law, where every offence had its price; but we nevertheless think that the magisterial lenity proceeds altogether from awe at the transcendental qualities of the quality, the moral elevation of those who are, as our friends, the gemini of Smiths, so happily expressed it, in their "Rejected Addresses "-"possessed of ought to give."

Voltaire tells us that in Russia, it was deemed virtuous to imbibe brandy à l'indiscrétion, but sinful to smoke tobacco, because the Scriptures have declared, that what goeth into the mouth does not defile a man, but what cometh out; and truly we opine that Master Foote's imputed insignificance of the ortolans and champagne, is but a Cossackish piece of casuistry; for, are not our thoughts and actions the children of our humours, and our humours the products of our food? should not good meat therefore produce good humours, and good humours engender good deeds? But, if so, valet consequentia; and our magistrates are not so illogical, when they infer the innocence of the accused, who has proceeded from the Clarendon to the watch-house, while they draw an opposite conclusion of him, who has qualified at a beer-shop, or a ginpalace? But, something too much of this, or, as the Latin has it-de his hactenus.

Passing from the general and abstract veneration which the ortolans, &c., inspire towards their consumers, be they whom they may, we proceed to consider the feeling they beget in their relation to those individuals with whom we come into a closer contact; and we think it will not be difficult to show that, of all the virtues, cardinal or uncardinal, wealth is the one quality of the greatest consequence to the observer. It was made matter of complaint against Providence by a Greek writer, that, whereas it had provided ample tests of the fineness of gold, there was no touchstone of virtue applicable, à priori, to the heart of man. Now it is singular enough (if what we have hitherto advanced be exact), that such a touchstone should really exist, and that it should be found in the

Histoire de Charles XII.

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