It is quite true that the largest part of conversation turns upon eating and drinking, the weather, the vices and follies of our neighbours, and a thousand other trifles that lead not to dispute; and it must be admitted that it is bad companionship to be eternally canvassing the greater interests of life, and forcing upon society opinions upon things in general. There are, indeed, themes in plenty which belong to the neutral ground of debate; but it is very pitiable that they should so ill bear repetition. All the world, if they dared avow as much, are heartily tired of them. Like cursing and swearing, they are merely unmeaning expletives to supply the lack of sense, to gain time, and to give a man the satisfaction of sometimes hearing his own voice. With all the assistance of cards, music, dancing, and champagne, society is at best but a dreary business, and it requires no little animal spirits to undergo the infliction with decency. Are you admitted on terms of familiarity to the domestic hearth of your friend, that privilege confers on you the opportunity of becoming intimately acquainted with the faults of his servants, and (what is worse) with the merits of his children.
A dinner of ceremony is a funeral without a legacy; an assembly is a mob, and a ball a compound of glare, tinsel, noise, and dust. However amusing in their freshness, after a few repetitions, they are only rendered endurable by the prospect of some collateral gain, or the gratification of personal vanity. To exhibit the beauty of a young wife, or the diamonds of an old one; to be able to say the best thing that is uttered; to sport a red ribbon or a Waterloo medal in their first novelty; to carry a point with a great man, or to borrow money from a rich one, may pass off an evening very well, with those who happen to be interested in such speculations; but, these things apart, the arrantest trifler in the circle must get weary at last, and be heartily rejoiced when the conclusion of the season spares him all further reiteration of the mill-horse operation. It is this insipidity of society that forces so many of its members upon desperate adventures of gallantry, and upon deep play. Any thing, every thing is good to escape from the languor and listlessness of a converse from which whatever interests is banished. Many a woman loses her character, and many a man incurs a verdict of ruinous damages, in the simple search of that rarest of all rare things in society—a sensation. Neither is the matter much mended, if, barring the insipidity of bon-ton company, you plunge into the formal gravity of the middle classes, or into the noisy, empty mirth of the lower. The man of sense and feeling, wherever he goes, will find himself in a minority, in which few will speak his language or comprehend his ideas. He will seldom return to his home without a weary sense of the "stale, flat, and unprofitable" nothings he has been compelled to entertain in his intercourse with the world,—without the recollection of some outrage on his independence, some dogmatism that he dared not question, some impertinence that he dared not confute. With his ears ringing with blue-stocking literature, threadbare sophistries, forms erected into important principles, mediocrity elevated into consideration, and the pre-eminence of the vain, the ignorant, and the contemptible, he will shut himself up in his solitude, and say with the Englishman at Paris Je m'ennuis très bien ici. Against the recurrence of these annoyances, day after day renewed, what nerves can hold out? As life advances, time becomes precious, every moment is counted, every enjoyment is computed; and while the effort necessary for pleasing and being pleased becomes greater, the motive for making that exertion grows less. When the sources of physical gratification are dried up, and the illusions of life are dissipated, there remains nothing for enjoyment but a tranquil fireside, and the mastery of our own ideas and of our own habits in the privacy of home. But then, to enjoy these, you must not have a methodist wife, and you must have a porter who can lie with a good grace, a fellow who could say "not at home," though death himself knocked at the door. Neither should you read the newspapers, nor walk the streets. The times are long gone by since "wisdom cried out there." Folly, impertinence, sheer impertinence, has exclusive possession of the king's highway; and a dog with a tin-kettle at tail has as good a chance as the wretch who dares to tread the pavement without partaking of the ruling insanity. Oh! Mr. Brougham, Mr. Brougham! your schoolmaster has a great deal yet to do: pray heaven his rods and his fools' caps may hold out!—New Month. Mag.
TO "BEAUTY."
The morn is up! wake, Beauty, wake!
The flower is on the lea,
The blackbird sings within the brake,
The thrush is on the tree;
Forth to the balmy fields repair,
And let the breezes mild
Lift from thy brow the falling hair,
And fan my little child—
Yet if thy step be 'mid the dews,
Beauty! be sure to change your shoes!
'Tis noon! the butterfly springs up,
High from her couch of rest,
And scorns the little blue-bell cup
Which all night long she press'd.
Away! we'll seek the walnut's shade,
And pass the sunny hour,
The bee within the rose is laid,
And veils him in the flower;
Mark not the lustre of his wing,
Beauty! be careful of his sting!
'Tis eve! but the retiring ray
A halo deigns to cast
Round scenes on which it shone all day,
And gilds them to the last:
Thus, ere thine eyelids close in sleep,
Let Memory deign to flee
Far o'er the mountain and the deep,
To cast one beam on me!
Yes, Beauty! 'tis mine inmost prayer—
But don't forget to curl your hair!
Blackwood's Mag.
GOG AND MAGOG.—(A Fragment.)
Pensively and profoundly was I meditating, seated one evening upon a stone bench in Guildhall, when, as the gathering gloom invested the solemn faces of Gog and Magog, rendering them mysteriously dim and indistinct, methought I saw them slowly shut their eyes, nod their heads, fall asleep, and actually begin to snore. Never did I hear any thing more sonorously grand and awful than that portentous inbreathing of Gog and Magog, resounding through the Gothic vastness of Guildhall; but, behold! how omnipotent is the dreaming imagination! I myself had been dozing; the sound of my own nose, transferred by a metonymy of the fancy to the nostrils of those wooden idols, had become, as it were, the living apotheosis of a snore, which had subdued me by its sublimity. Most fortunate was it that I awoke; for, on attentively inspecting the faces of the figures, I saw them working and writhing with all the contortions of the Pythoness or the Sibyl, labouring in the very throes of inspiration, struggling with the advent of the prophetical afflatus. At length their lips parted, when, in a low, solemn voice, that thrilled through the dark, deserted, and silent hall, they poured forth alternately the following vaticinal strain, each starting and trembling as he concluded:—
"From Bank, Change, Mansion-house, Guildhall,
Throgmorton, and Threadneedle,
From London-stone, and London wall,
When City housewife's wheedle
To Brunswick, Russell, Bedford Squares,
And Portland-place, their spouses,
Anxious to give themselves great airs
Of fashion in great houses,
Then Gog shall start, and Magog shall
Tremble upon his pedestal."
"When merchant, banker, broker, shake
In Crockford's club their elbow,
And for St. James's clock forsake
The chiming of thy bell, Bow:
When Batson's, Garraway's, and John's,
At night show empty boxes,
While cits are playing dice with dons,
Or ogling opera doxies;
Then Gog shall start, and Magog shall
Tremble upon his pedestal."
"When city dames give routs and reels,
And ape high-titled prancers,
When City misses dance quadrilles,
Or waltz with whisker'd Lancers;
When City gold is quickly spent
In trinkets, feasts, and raiment,
And none suspend their merriment
Until they all stop payment,
Then Gog shall start, and Magog shall
Tremble upon his pedestal."