MODERN SATIRE.—A satire on everything is a satire on nothing; it is mere absurdity. All contempt, all disrespect, implies something respected, as a standard to which it is referred; just as every valley implies a hill. The persiflage of the French and of fashionable worldlings, which turns into ridicule the exceptions and yet abjures the rules, is like Trinculo's government—its latter end forgets its beginning. Can there be a more mortal, poisonous consumption and asphyxy of the mind than this decline and extinction of all reverence?—Jean Paul.
[WINTER PICTURES FROM THE POETS.]
Although English Poetry abounds with pictures of the seasons, its Winter pictures are neither numerous, nor among its best. For one good snow-piece we can readily find twenty delicate Spring pictures—twinkling with morning dew, and odorous with the perfume of early flowers. It would be easy to make a large gallery of Summer pictures; and another gallery, equally large, which should contain only the misty skies, the dark clouds, and the falling leaves of Autumn. Not so with Winter scenes. Not that the English poets have not painted the last, and painted them finely, but that as a rule they have not taken kindly to the work. They prefer to do what Keats did in one of his poems, viz., make Winter a point of departure from which Fancy shall wing her way to brighter days:
"Fancy, high-commissioned; send her!
She has vassals to attend her,
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost,
She will bring thee, all together,