ions of invisible creatures,
wantoning in bliss born of the sunshine and the vernal prime.

Are we sermonising overmuch in this our L'ENVOY to these our misnamed
RECREATIONS? Even a sermon is not always useless; the few concluding
sentences are sometimes luminous, like stars rising on a dull twilight;
the little flower that attracted Park's eyes when he was fainting in the
desert, was to him beauteous as the rose of Sharon; there is solemnity
in the shadow of quiet trees on a noisy road; a churchyard may be felt
even in a village fair; a face of sorrow passes by us in our gaiety,
neither unfelt nor unremembered in its uncomplaining calm; and sweet
from some still house in the city stir is

"The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise."

We daresay you are a very modest person; but we are all given to
self-glorification, private men and public, individuals and nations; and
every one Era and Ego has been prouder than another of its respective
achievements. To hear the Present Generation speak, such an elderly
gentleman as the Past Generation begins to suspect that his personal
origin lies hid in the darkness of antiquity; and worse--that he is of
the Pechs. Now, we offer to back the Past Generation against the Present
Generation, at any feat the Present Generation chooses, and give the
long odds. Say Poetry. Well, we bring to the scratch a few
champions--such as, Beattie, Cowper, Crabbe, Rogers, Bowles, Burns,
Baillie, Campbell, Graham, Montgomery, Scott, Southey, Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Hunt, Hogg, Shelley, Keates, Pollok, Cunningham, Bloomfield,
Clare, and _risum teneatis amici_--Ourselves.

"All with waistcoats of red and breeches of blue,
And mighty long tails that come swingeing through."

And at sight of the cavalcade--for each poet is on his Pegasus--the
champions of the Present Generation, accoutred in corduroy kilts and
top-boots, and on animals which, "well do we know, but dare not name,"
wheel to the right-about with "one dismal universal bray," brandishing
their wooden sabres, till, frenzied by their own trumpeters, they charge
madly a palisade in their own rear, and as dismounted cavalry make good
their retreat. This in their strategies is called a drawn battle.

Heroes, alive or dead, of the Past Generation, we bid you hail!
Exceeding happiness to have been born among such Births--to have lived
among such Lives--to be buried among such Graves. O great glory to have
seen such Stars rising