made to feel more for others and myself, in the Vaults of St. Michan's. In the Catacombs the eye or the heart finds nothing individual to rest upon; your sympathy is dispersed over myriads of anonymous skulls and thigh-bones, and these fantastically arranged into melodramatic combinations, as if the Graces have any business under ground; and after death has picked us to the bone, our skeletons must be broken up and shuffled into attitudes conforming to the immutable principles of Parisian taste. I could never heave a sigh while promenading between those neatly trimmed hedge-rows of human bones; I thought of and pitied the workmen more than the materials. But at St. Michan's, I felt that I was really in a sepulchre and surrounded by the the dead. The very absence of neatness in their distribution, and of respectful observance towards them, was a source of instructive reflection, by forewarning me of my cessation of personal importance when I shall cease to breathe. Every kick the sexton gave a chance skull or two that stopped the way, had its moral: it was as good as the festive usage in old Egypt, of handing round an image of death from guest to guest, to the words of

“Drink and be merry, for such you shall be."

In the absence of such a custom now, I know of nothing more cal-
culated to bring down the pride of any one that piques himself too
much upon his flesh and blood, than an occasional conversation in
a church-yard with a sexton or gravedigger, on the subject of their
trade. It is very well as long as a man has a certain allowance of
mind and muscles at his disposal, and can strut, and talk, and look
big, and hum fragments of bravuras, and be seen now and then in a
tandem, and resort to the other methods of commanding some defe-
rence to his personal identity; but when once this important personage
becomes motionless, cold, and tongue-tied, and, unable to remonstrate,
is seized by the undertaker, and, as the Irish phrase is, "is put to bed
with a shovel," farewell human respect !" out of sight, out of mind :”
his epitaph, if he has left assets to buy one, may, for a while, keep up
a little bustle about his name, but a short dialogue with a sexton of
aftertimes, over the scattered fragments of his existence, will afford a
pretty accurate measure of the degree of real insignificance into which
he has subsided. This is mortifying; but it is among the sources of
our highest interests. Certainly, it is only natural that we should look to
some future compensation for our minds, in return for the many insults
their old companions are sure to suffer when they are not by to protect
them it were an intolerable prospect otherwise. To-day to be active,
happy, and ambitious, conscious of being"" made for the contemplation
of heaven and all noble objects," and to-morrow to be flung as useless
lumber into a hole, and in process of time to be buffeted by grave-
diggers and shovelled up to make way for new comers, without a
friendly moralizer to pronounce an
Alas, poor Yorick!" over our
chop-fallen crania-or perhaps (what is still more humiliating in a
posthumous point of view) to be purloined by resurrection-men, and
hung up in dissecting-rooms as models of osteology for the instruction
of surgeons'-mates for his Majesty's navy-the thoughts of all this
would gall, as well it might, our vanity to the quick, were it not that
Religion, assured of a retribution, can smile at these indignities, and
discover, in every rude cuff that may be given to our dishonoured
bones, a farther argument for the immortality of the soul.

PETER PINDARICS.

The Mayor of Miroblais.

WHILE he was laying plans for getting
The honours of the Chapeau rouge,
The Cardinal Du Bois was ever fretting;
All his days and nights allotting

To bribes and schemes, intriguing, plotting,
Until his face grew yellow as gambouge,
His eyes sepulchral, dull, and gummy,
And his whole frame a walking mummy.
Meanwhile his steward, De la Vigne,
Seem'd to be fattening on his master;
For, as the one grew lank and lean,
The other only thrived the faster,
Enjoying, as he swell'd in figure,
Such constant spirits, laugh, and snigger,
That it e'en struck his Excellency,

Who call'd him up, and ask'd him whence he
Contrived to get so plump and jolly ;
While he himself, a man of rank,

Visibly shrank,

And daily grew more melancholy.

66

Really, my lord," the steward said,
"There's nothing marvellous in that;
You have a hat for ever in your head;
My head is always in my hat."

Du Bois, too wealthy to be marr'd in all
His plots, was presently a Cardinal,

And wore what he had pined to win;
When pasquinades soon flew about,
Hinting his sconce was deeper red without,
Than 'twas within.

Perhaps it was, but that 's no matter;
The Pope, like any other hatter,
Makes coverings, not heads; and this
With its new guest agreed so well,
That he soon wore an alter'd phiz,
Ate heartily, began to swell,
Recover'd from his ails and ills,
And got quite rosy in the gills.

'Tis strange, but true-our Worthy wore

Fine robes, and wax'd both plump and fresh,

From the first moment he forswore

All pomps and appetites of flesh.

His Eminence, on this inflation

Both of his stomach and his station,

His old Château resolved to visit,

Accompanied by one Dupin,

A sandy-headed little man,

Who daily managed to elicit

Jokes from some French Joe Miller's page,
Old, and but little of their age;

Though they drew forth as never-failing
A roar of laughter every time,
As if they were as new and prime
As those that we are now retailing.

To the Château in Languedoc
Whole deputations

From the surrounding districts flock,
With odes, addresses, gratulations,
And long orations;

And, among others, the Préfect
Of Miroblais,

Famed for its annual Fair of Asses,
Began a speech which, by its dull
Exordium, threaten'd to be full

As long and dry as fifty masses.

Dupin, who saw his yawning master
Somewhat annoy'd by this disaster,
And thought it might be acceptable
To quiz the Bore, and stop his gabble,
Abruptly cried-" Pray, Mr. Mayor,
How much did asses fetch last Fair?"

WHEN the eccentric Rabelais was physician
To Cardinal Lorraine, he sat at dinner
Beside that gormandizing sinner,
Not like the medical magician,

Who whisk'd from Sancho Panza's fauces

The evanescent meats and sauces,

But to protect his sacred master
Against such diet as obstructs
The action of the epigastre,
O'erloads the biliary ducts,
The peristaltic motion crosses,
And puzzles the digestive process.

The Cardinal, one hungry day,

First having with his eyes consumed
Some lampreys that before him fumed,

Had plunged his fork into the prey,
When Rabelais gravely shook his head,

Tapp'd on his plate three times, and said-

66

Pah!-hard digestion! hard digestion !" And his bile-dreading Eminence,

Though sorely tempted, had the sense
To send it off without a question.

Hip! Hallo! bring the lampreys here!"
Cried Rabelais, as the dish he snatch'd;

And gobbling up the dainty cheer,
The whole was instantly despatch'd.

Redden'd with vain attempts at stifling

At once his wrath and appetite,

His Patron cried-" Your conduct 's rude;
This is no subject, Sir, for trifling;

How dare you designate this food

As indigestible and crude,

Then swallow it before my sight?"

Quoth Rabelais, "It may soon be shewn
That I don't inerit this rebuff:

I tapp'd the plate, and that, you'll own,
Is indigestible enough;

But as to this unlucky fish,

With you so strangely out of favour,
Not only 'tis a wholesome dish,

But one of most delicious flavour."

H.

ON THE POETRY AND MORAL USE OF FLOWERS.

"Sweets to the sweet."

WHAT a pleasant variegated field we have before us; a field glowing A in rich unheeded and ungleaned beauties; a wilderness of sweets. thousand delicate forms and rainbow colours, and odorous buds, "culled fresh from Psyche's amorous bowers," seem bursting on the sight and sense. My youth-my earliest love of flowers-the first tree I planted -the girl to whom I first breathed love—with the heart's best and fondest recollections, appear daily and hourly more freshly and vividly before my aged eyes. I know not how it is, intervenient things fade away, and I find myself, as it were, returning again and rambling unconsciously among my childhood's scenes.

I delighted in my garden when a boy; and now, though I had long But let forgotten and deserted them, I feel my love of flowers revive. not botanists, or the professors and students of botany, expect any thing from us; our specimens will be altogether of another class. We shall intrench neither upon the system of Linnæus nor Jussieu; our system is of a far more harmless and unpretending kind,-no Latin, no classification, no analysis and dissection: far from squeezing their incensebreathing souls out of them, double and treble-pressed, we shall merely preserve a poetic memorial of our flowers, as a grateful return for the ethereal fragrance and exquisite sweetnesses they have elicited, gathered and crushed in the honoured hands of our divinest poets.

-

By us, however, for I will not call myself-who likes to be called? an old man,-by us, those amaranth flowers have only been tasted and most lady-like adored. But of "stealing and giving odours," and coquetting, as with the poets, alas! we may say with a learned Theban, "we are not worthy:" so let this pass; "let the race be to the swift and the battle to the strong." Our voice shall be loud in their praise, though we wait, with empty hands, at their feast. Nay, we must not begin an episode yet;-but remember my old age, Mr. Editor,-I will try to ramble no more.

Far away then, O my flowers, be all cruel thoughts of lectures, instrumental cases, knives, pincers, and magnifying glasses, with which to see and to seize that fine invisible texture, those green threads and

VOL. V. NO. XXIII.

veins through which the ethereal juices so joyously course along the living "milky way." Not ours so wantonly to mar your bright faces of brief beauty," of splendour in the grass and glory in the flower." Live ye, and flourish—-short emblems and undefaced images, from race to race, of earth's worth and vanities; of the blooming and the fading of these our mortal joys!

Nor is it merely with the rough exterior "mixture of earth's mould" I have to do; it is with their more unfading and immortal qualities, the loves and spirits of the plants, I would converse, as blooming in undying song. But this language belongs only, I believe, immemorially to young poets and ladies, and souls "that love the moon," and can sit and smile at grief with bursting hearts; making quaint comparisons out of the moonlight sweetly sleeping on the bank, and the sleeping and dying flowers: it is for the night-lovers of the nightingale and the rose, the interpreters of the voiceless tongues of birds and myrtle-leaves, timidly given and blushingly received; memento's amare (not mori) and the "forget me not" of idolizing wretched lovers. For such we vindicate them, and for the yet more hallowed service of the dead-for the young and beautiful of all times and people, whose fondness we half imagine lives beyond the tomb, as, ere we leave them, we scatter over them the flowers they loved.

Far from us, then, be the hands of the "culler of herbs and simples,” the wide-wasting botanist and chemist, except only the chemist bee, whose powers

"So subtly true,

From poisonous herbs extract the healing dew,"

but whose delicate forceps, unlike the botanist's, never defaces the outward "divinity of the flower." We are quite at a loss to point out the period and first occasion of this our Platonic love for plants, so per fectly dissimilar and distinct from the more earthly and interested admiration of the naturalist gardener and professed florist, comparatively "of the earth earthy;" the emblem, the allegory, the poetical soul and beauty of the blooming race, belonging not to them. We were smitten, however, with their gentle and ethereal qualities earlier than we can tell : "A school-boy wandering in the woods To pull the flowers so gay,"

being a portion of the very first lines we were taught to commit to the tablet of our memory, superseding, we suppose, other still "more trivial fond records," when we stood a trembling petticoated urchin at the school-dame's side. In a similar spirit were committed to heart those moral lessons from the flowers given to us by our friend Mrs. Barbauld, and the good Dr. Watts;-our second lesson

"Mark how the little busy bee
Improves each shining hour,
And gathers honey, all the day,
From every opening flower," &c.

which was followed by—

"How cheerful along the

gay mead,

The daisies and cowslips appear," &c.

and thus, in a short time, it was my lot to tremble at the drowsy and awful warning-voice of the sluggard