Impartially examine the characters of those on whom the world has bestowed the epithets of illustrious and great, and how few among them will you discover either estimable or amiable! Nay, we shall too often detect in this number those who, while they arrogantly aspired to be deemed superior to the rest of their species, exhibited more than human weaknesses, with vices truly diabolical. As used by the generality of mankind, glory and infamy, celebrity and disgrace, are but too frequently synonimous.

It would be more tedious, perhaps, than instructive, were we to examine all our medals in detail, and scrutinize them one by one. We will now, therefore, content ourselves with a more cursory glance at some of the others, which we shall take up at random; and here we have one on whose obverse is a figure of Hymen, with the motto-" Conjugal Felicity;" and surely we could not have pitched upon a happier omen for a new-year's wish. And does this also, like the rest, some fair reader may perhaps inquire, possess a fatal reverse?-it cannot be. Perhaps, then, we had better not turn it; but incredulity and curiosity prevail, and we read with grief and astonishment-Indifference, Contempt, Disgust, and-Doctors' Commons.

This medal, which shews on one side the Golden Age, represented by a group of nymphs and youths, crowned with flowers, and dancing beneath the shade of a spreading tree, exhibits on the other a parcel of naked savages leaping and grinning-to say nothing of other circumstances that do not tell greatly to the advantage of unsophisticated nature, or display it exactly in the same colours as poetry does.

Let us

turn this other, on which is inscribed-" The Good old Times," and "The Wisdom of our Ancestors," and we shall perceive the curfew bell,-ordeal by fire and water,—a preux chevalier, in person and manners not much unlike a modern butcher, and unable to write his own name,-superstition, monkery, priestcraft, and witchcraft,—Torquemada and the Inquisition,-Queen Mary and her Smithfield faggots,-the female Nero, Catherine de Medici,-Rodrigo Borgia, with the style of Vicegerent of Christ and Successor of St Peter, the pious Defender of the Faith, our Second Charles, with his Mahometan seraglio,-and sundry other ever-to-be-regretted blessings and characteristics of by-gone times. Then hie thee to yon old grand-dame, who is so pathetically descanting on the wickedness of the present age, and bid her use it as a comment on modern degeneracy.

Of this medal one side bears for its motto-" The god-like Healing Art," while the other shews Dr Eady and a death-head. Here is law," the perfection of reason," and in theory most excellent; but for the practice of it we must turn to the reverse. This medal of rural innocence and happiness, so delightfully pourtrayed by poets, who, like other portraitpainters, possess the talent of keeping down all the deformities of their originals, or converting them into actual beauties,-has a per contra of game-laws and poachers, the interior of a rustic alehouse,-two or three village-attorneys,-a cottage filled with dirty ragged brats, ycleped by the courtesy of pastoral writers and dealers in namby pamby, "rosy-cheeked cherubs;" with many other sundries far more pleasing and edifying in verse than in matter-of-fact prose.

Here we perceive English liberty backed by an English watchman; there English morality, by the details and police-reports of an English newspaper; and there again national industry and the prosperity of our manufactures, by swarms of artisans' children, condemned to unremitted toil within the pestilential and demoralizing atmosphere of a crowded factory,a place to be paralleled only by the horrors of a slaveship.

Every medal, in short, that we can take up in our whole collection, however fair the type and impress it bears on one side, presents some disagreeable contrast, some antithetical and accompanying evil, on the other. Yet wisdom, like the prudent JANUS, will look steadfastly on both, that it may, as far as human prudence can do, erase that which is bad, while it improves that which is good. It is folly only that looks with out farther examination on merely the fairest side of things, and then exclaims that nothing can be better, or that nothing has been worse, than it now is. With regard, too, to the characters of men, adulation dwells only on the fair side, detraction on the reverse; but discrimination and impartiality will examine both, and be deceived by neither.

2

THE BEASTS VERSUS MAN:

A FABLE.

THE brutes assembled to complain
Of man, their tyrant, proud and vain ;
And all agreed they should petition,
Without delay, imperial Jove,

The haughty creature to remove

From power abused to meet condition. "What!" cried the Fox, " because sometimes I taste a chick, or pluck a goose,

Am I for ever, in vile rhymes,
To be the subject of abuse?
Because I sometimes down my gullet
Contrive to slide a tender pullet,

Shall therefore every two-legg'd knave

Be termed a crafty fox?—

The bare idea reason shocks.

When do we prey on the community
By lotteries, bubbles, schemes, or gaming;
Or, rogueries on parchment framing,
Plunder each other with impunity?"

The Hog as speaker now advanced,
And at the assembly as he glanced,
"My friends," he cried, "ye know me well;
My goodly nature ye can tell;

Y

Say then, shall I be termed a glutton,
Because I relish what I eat,

Nor wish my stomach e'er to cheat?—
The accusation is most pleasant.

But say; do I or kill my mutton,
Or chase the hare, or wound the deer,
Or shoot at partridge, or at pheasant,

My board to load with varied cheer?
Man against us vile slanders forging,
With most malignant personality,
Taxes us hogs with love of gorging.—
In him 'tis merely hospitality,-
Good-living, gastronomy, taste.
Have we those greasy, graceless books,
Composed by learned doctor-cooks,-
By scribes, who teach men how to tickle
Their palates with both sauce and pickle,
Of which they form a library, rich in their
Dame Glasse, Dame Rundell, Doctor Kitchener ;
And, with most strange, unhallowed bookery,
Teach the black, deadly art of cookery?

Yet men do this,—and, ay, much worse,-
Without remorse they kill us swine,
Then preach up temperance while they dine."

He said, and, of the Long-eared Race,
One now stepped forth to take his place.
"Some great offence, as it appears,
To man is given by my ears;

But, let him hold his witless railing,
Sure length of ears is no great failing;
And, if the case we fairly scan,

The difference chief, 'twixt us and man,