et under his mahogany, and
drink his wine, besides making an ass of myself, I do little harm; but if
we prostitute the honours of the nation, the nation itself suffers; and,
as regards noble sentiments and enlightened public spirit, withers and
declines.

Guizot says--and if he had not said it somebody else would--that our
civilization is yet young. I believe it. At present it is little better
than an experiment. If it be a good, it is not without its
disadvantages. It has its drawbacks. Man gives up something for it.
One of its greatest evils perhaps is its monotony, which makes us curse
and mourn our fate--which forces from our lips the exclamation of
Mariana, in the "Moated Grange"--

"I'm a aweary, aweary--
Oh, would that I were dead;"

or which impels us, with the "Blighted Being" of Locksley Hall, to long
to "burst all bonds of habit and to wander far away." Do these lines
chance to attract the attention of one of the lords of creation--of one
who,

"Thoughtless of mamma's alarms,
Sports high-heeled boots and whiskers,"

--what is it, we would ask, most magnanimous Sir, in the most delicate
manner imaginable, that keeps you standing by the hour together, looking
out of the window of your club in Pall Mall, in the utter weariness of
your heart, swearing now at the weather, now at the waiter, and, anon,
muttering something about your dreaming that you dwelt in marble halls,
but that very monotony of civilization which we so much deprecate? Were
it not for that, you might be working in this working world--touching the
very kernel and core of life, instead of thus feeding on its shell. And
if it be that the soft eye of woman looks down on what we now write, what
is it, we would ask, O peerless paragon, O celestial goddess, but the
same feeling that makes you put aside the last new novel, and, in
shameless defiance of the rules taught in that valuable publication and
snob's _vade mecum_--"Hints on the Etiquette and the Usages of Society,"
actually yawn--aye, yawn, when that gold watch, hanging by your most
fairy-like and loveliest of forms, does not tell one hour that does not
bear with it from earth to heaven some tragedy acted--some villainy
achieved--some heroic thing done: aye, yawn, when before you is spread
out the great _role_ of life, with its laughter and tears--with its
blasts from hell--with its odours coming down from heaven itself. A
brave, bold, noble-hearted Miss Nightinga