ferent actors in society, and large characters in the
play-bills, as well as loud thunders from the gods, may be earned by
very stupid, very vulgar, and very ill-bred companions. The same may
be said of poets. We are poor creatures at best, and the giant of
a reviewer very often cuts but a very sorry figure when left to the
ricketty stilts of his own unsupported judgment in a drawing-room. You
are tolerably familiar with our political parties; but you are yet to
be acquainted with our literary squads, which are the most bigotted,
selfish, exclusive, arrogant, little knots of little people it is
possible to conceive.'

"By the time that Colonel A------had ended his short initiation into
these various arcana, the company broke up; the doctor to give a lecture
on egg-shells at the Committee of Taste; Lord Flute to visit the Opera;
Lord Skimcream to the Green Boom; Lord Flash to 'Fives Court,' to see a
set-to by candle-light; the exquisites to Bouge et Noir or Almack's;
and Lord Wetherwool to vote on an agricultural question, without
understanding a syllable of its merits.

"Nevertheless," I soliloquized as I rode home, "his Lordship will
be surprised and gratified, I dare say, to find himself a perfect
Demosthenes in the newspaper reports of to-morrow morning. Hems, coughs,
stammerings, blowing of the nose, and ten-minute lapses of memory,
all vanish in passing through the sieves and bolters of a report. What
magicians the reporters are! What talents, what powers of language they
profusely and gratuitously bestow! Somnus protect me from hearing any
but some half dozen orators in both houses! The reader, who peruses the
report, has only the flour of the orator's efforts provided for him.
But Lord help the unfortunate patient in the gallery, who, hopeless
of getting through the dense mass which occupy the seats round him, is
condemned to sit with an 'aching head,' and be well nigh choaked with
the husks and the bran."

~~409~~~ Our party felt so much amused by these lively and
characteristic pictures of real life among the Corinthians of the
Metropolis, that all thoughts of seeking amusement out of doors appeared
for the present relinquished; and Sparkle, to keep the subject alive,
resumed as follows.

"In order to give some shade and variety to this sketch of society
in the west, we will now, if agreeable, travel eastward as far as the
entrance to the City, where I will introduce you, in fancy, to what must
(at least t