fles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with
folly that rolling world the brain: another twist, and love is lord
paramount, a paltry bit of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its
warm blush over all the reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for
that marplot, Disappointment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated
morsel of lamp-black: again Hope's little bit of blue paint makes azure
rainbows all about the firmament of man's own inner world; and at last
an atom of gold-dust specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and
haply leaves the old miser to his master-passion. So, ever changing day
by day, every man's life is but a kaleidoscope. Stay; this simile is
somewhat of the longest, but the whim is upon me, and I must have my
way; the fit possesses me to try a sonnet, and I shall look far for a
fairer thesis; he that hates verse--and the Muses now-a-days are too
old-maidish to look many lovers--may skip it, and no harm done; but one
or two may like this stave on

LIFE.

I saw a child with a kaleidoscope,
Turning at will the tesselated field;
And straight my mental eye became unseal'd,
I learnt of life, and read its horoscope:
Behold, how fitfully the patterns change!
The scene is azure now with hues of Hope;
Now sobered gray by Disappointment strange;
With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright;
Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold;
Made glorious by Religion's purple light;
Or sicklied o'er with yellow lust of Gold;
So, good or evil coming, peace or strife,
Zeal when in youth, and Avarice when old,
In changeful, chanceful phases passeth life.

It is well I was not stopped before my lawful fourteenth rhyme by yonder
prosaic gentleman, humbly listening in front, who asks, with somewhat of
malicious triumph, whereto does all this lead?--Categorically, sir,
[there is no argument in the world equal to a word of six syllables,]
categorically, sir, to this: of all life's turns and twists, few things
produce more change to the daring _debutant_ than successful authorship;
it is as if, applying our simile, a fragment of printed bookishness
among those kaleidoscopic morsels, having worked its way into the field
of vision, had there got stereotyped by a photogenic process: in fact,
it fixes on it a predestinated "author's mind."

An author's mind! what a subject for the lights and shadows of
metaphysical portraiture! what a panorama of images! what a w