ow tossed about amid the very offal of language. We see it when some
noble house, an illustrious symbol of heroic honour, the ark of high
traditions, finds its _reductio ad absurdum_ in some hare-brained
turf-lord, who defiles its memories as he sells its pictures. But no lapse
could be more pitiful than the end of St. Valentine. Once the day on which
great gentlemen and great ladies exchanged stately and, as Pepys
frequently complained, costly compliments; when the ingenuity of love
tortured itself for the sweetest conceit wherein to express the very
sweetest thing; the May-day of the heart, when the very birds were Cupid's
messengers, and all the world wore ribbons and made pretty speeches. What
is it now? The festival of the servants' hall. It is the sacred day set
apart for the cook to tell the housemaid, in vividly illustrated verse,
that she need have no fear of the policeman thinking twice of _her_; for
the housemaid to make ungenerous reflections on 'cookey's' complexion and
weight, and to assure that 'queen of the larder' that it is not her, but
her puddings, that attract the constabulary heart. It is the day when
inoffensive little tailors receive anonymous letters beginning 'You silly
snip,' when the baker is unpleasantly reminded of his immemorial
_sobriquet_ of 'Daddy Dough,' and coarse insult breaks the bricklayer's
manly heart. Perhaps of all its symbols the most typical and popular are:
a nursemaid, a perambulator enclosing twins, and a gigantic dragoon. In
fact, we are faced by this curious development--that the day once sacred
to universal compliment is now mainly dedicated to low and foolish insult
Oh, that whirligig!

Do true lovers still remember the day to keep it holy, one wonders? Does
Ophelia still sing beneath the window, and do the love-birds still carry
on their celestial postage? One fears that all have gone with the
sedan-chair, the stage-coach, and last year's snow. Will the true lovers
go next? But, indeed, a florist told us that he had sold many flowers for
'valentines' this year, and that the prettier practice of sending flowers
was, he thought, supplanting the tawdry and stereotyped offering of cards.
Which reminds one of an old verse:

'The violet made haste to appear,
To be her bosom guest,
With first primrose that grew this year
I purchas'd from her breast;
To me,
Gave she,
Her golden lock for mine;
My ring of jet
Fo