ictory fight,--for chiefs the
soldiers]--What visions sweep across us! What glories didst thou
witness! Over what conquests didst thou preside! The mightiest epoch,
the most wonderful events which the world, thy world, ever knew,--of
these was it not indeed, and dazzlingly thine,--

"To share the triumph and partake the gale"?

Let the scene shift. Manhood is touched by age; but Lust is "heeled" by
Luxury, and Pomp is the heir of Pleasure; gewgaws and gaud, instead of
glory, surround, rejoice, and flatter thee to the last. There rise thy
buildings; there lie, secret but gorgeous, the tabernacles of thine
ease; and the earnings of thy friends, and the riches of the people whom
they plunder, are waters to thine imperial whirlpool. Thou art lapped
in ease, as is a silkworm; and profusion flows from thy high and unseen
asylum as the rain poureth from a cloud.--Much didst thou do to beautify
chimney-tops, much to adorn the snuggeries where thou didst dwell.
Thieving with thee took a substantial shape; and the robberies Of the
public passed into a metempsychosis of mortar, and became public-houses.
So there and thus, building and planning, didst thou spin out thy latter
yarn, till Death came upon thee; and when we looked around, lo! thy
brother was on thy hearth. And thy parasites and thy comrades and thine
ancient pals and thy portly blowens, they made a murmur, and they packed
up their goods; but they turned ere they departed, and they would have
worshipped thy brother as they worshipped thee,--but he would not! And
thy sign-post is gone and mouldered already; and to the Jolly Angler has
succeeded the Jolly Tar! And thy picture is disappearing fast from the
print-shops, and thy name from the mouths of men! And thy brother, whom
no one praised while thou didst live, is on a steeple of panegyric built
above the churchyard that contains thy grave. O shifting and volatile
hearts of men! Who would be keeper of a public? Who dispense the wine
and the juices that gladden, when the moment the pulse of the band
ceases, the wine and the juices are forgotten?

To History,--for thy name will be preserved in that record which,
whether it be the calendar of Newgate or of nations, telleth its alike
how men suffer and sin and perish,--to History we leave the sum and
balance of thy merits and thy faults. The sins that were thine were
those of the man to whom pleasure is all in all: thou wert, from root to
branch, sap and in hear