ilver-white seed that makes journeys on all
the winds up and down England and across it in the end of summer. It is
a most expert traveller, turning a little wheel a-tiptoe wherever the
wind lets it rest, and speeding on those pretty points when it is not
flying. The streets of London are among its many highways, for it is
fragile enough to go far in all sorts of weather. But it gets disabled
if a rough gust tumbles it on the water so that its finely-feathered feet
are wet. On gentle breezes it is able to cross dry-shod, walking the
waters.

All unlike is this pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. It is
far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds. It offers thistle plants
(or whatever is the flower that makes such delicate ashes) to the tops of
many thousand hills. Doubtless the farmer would rather have to meet it
in battalions than in these invincible units astray. But if the farmer
owes it a lawful grudge, there is many a rigid riverside garden wherein
it would be a great pleasure to sow the thistles of the nearest pasture.

POPULAR BURLESQUE

The more I consider that strange inversion of idolatry which is the
motive of Guy Fawkes Day and which annually animates the by-streets with
the sound of processionals and of recessionals--a certain popular version
of "Lest we forget" their unvaried theme; the more I hear the cries of
derision raised by the makers of this likeness of something unworshipful
on the earth beneath, so much the more am I convinced that the national
humour is that of banter, and that no other kind of mirth so gains as
does this upon the public taste.

Here, for example, is the popular idea of a street festival; that day is
as the people will actually have it, with their own invention, their own
material, their own means, and their own spirit. They owe nothing on
this occasion to the promptings or the subscriptions of the classes that
are apt to take upon themselves the direction and tutelage of the people
in relation to any form of art. Here on every fifth of November the
people have their own way with their own art; and their way is to offer
the service of the image-maker, reversed in hissing and irony, to some
creature of their hands.

It is a wanton fancy; and perhaps no really barbarous people is capable
of so overturning the innocent plan of original portraiture. To make a
mental image of all things that are named to the ear, or conceived in the
mind, being an indu