inspiration; but I should wish to know what gifts can be expected to reside in a poodle upper-benjamin, or whether artists can extract more from our modern uniforms than the dramatist. What sort of a figure should we cut in marble? or could any existing Hogarth throw a mass of modern hats into the corner of his picture, so that we might individualize every one, and appropriate it to its owner amid the group of living figures? The drab-coloured Quakers have never yet produced an artist; and the black and blue ones will probably be no better provided should the present modes continue.

But worse than this confusion of ranks is the levelling and jumbling of ages by this preposterous omniparity of appearance. It was but last week that a young acquaintance of mine overtaking, as he imagined, a fellow-collegian, and saluting him with a hearty slap on the back and the exclamation-"Ah! Harry, is it you?" found he had nearly knocked the breath out of his own grandfather! These pedestrian anachronisms, these walking impostors, these liars in broad-cloth, these habitual cheats, all ought to be sent to Bridewell; for if the reputation of juvenility be a good, is it not felonious to obtain it under false pretences? Every superannuated Adonis and "Dandy of sixty" should be shut up with all the grandmothers of the Loves in a House of mutual correction. What! is the tailor to be our modern alchymist, and take measure of us for a new youth? Is his magical goose to lay the golden egg which we may resolve into the true aurum potabile and elixir vita? Are his scissors

to dash the fatal shears from the hand of Atropos, and is he to pass the thread of life through his needle? Some of our juvenile septuagenaries, who strive to escape a second childhood by never going out of the first, seem besotted enough to imagine that they can stop the great wheel of Time by stuffing their wigs and cocked-hats between the spokes, and blunt the scythe of Death by wreathing it with bunches of touchme-not, as the Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogiton, twined roses around their swords. As well might they expect to arrest the progress of senility by stopping their watches, or ensure a perpetual spring by sticking artificial primroses in their button-holes. Let them "bid Taliocotius trim them the calves of twenty chairmen," and if he obey the summons, I will credit the possibility of their rejuveniscence; let them imitate Sinbad the Sailor, and shake the old man from their shoulders, and I will allow them to be covered with a youthful habit. Rather should they recollect the reproach of Fontenelle to a greybeard who had dyed the hair of his head black-"Sir, it is easy to see that you have worked more with your jaws than your brains." The old Frenchman who refused to take physic because he was in hopes death had forgotten him, and was afraid of putting him in mind, had better plea for his folly than these ancient simpletons, who hope to sneak by him in the disguise of boy's clothes. When any such are detected and carried off by the hawk-eyed King of shadows, I recommend their friends to insert their deaths in somewhat the following style: Died in the full flower of his poodle

great-coat, aged eighty" or, "Cut off in the prime of his Cossack trowsers, aged threescore and ten"—or, "Suddenly snatched from his friends in the first year of his Petersham hat, and sixty-seventh of his age”Mr. such-a-one. And should I myself survive a certain friend, which I hardly wish now that he has disfigured himself so piteously, I will take care to perpetuate that which he has vainly endeavoured to cut off from my recollection, by inscribing on his tomb"Here lies Frank Hartopp, the last of the Pigtails."

PETER PINDARICS.

Piron and the Judge of the Police.

PIRON, a poet of the Gallic nation,
Who beat all waggish rivals hollow,
Was apt to draw his inspiration
Rather from Bacchus than Apollo.
His hostess was his deity,

His Hippocrene was eau-de-vie,
And though 'tis said

That poets live not till they die,
When living he was often dead,-

That is to say, dead drunk.—“ While I,”

Quoth Piron, " am by all upbraided

*7

With drunkenness, the vilest, worst,

Most base, detestable, degraded,
Of sins that ever man repented,

None of you blames this cursed thirst
With which I'm constantly tormented.

Worse than a cholic or a phthisic,
E'en now it gripes me so severely,
That I must fly to calm it, merely
Swallowing brandy as a physic.”—

To cure this unrelenting fever

He pour'd such doses through his lips, he Was shortly what the French call ivre, Anglice-tipsy;

And while the midnight bell was pealing

Its solemn tolling,

Our Bacchanal was homeward reeling,

Tumbling and rolling,

Until at last he made a stop,

Suffering his noddle, which he could not keep Upright, upon the ground to drop,

And in two minutes was asleep

Fast as a top.

Round came the guard, and seeing him extended Across the gutter,

Incompetent to move or utter,

They thought at first his days were ended ;

But finding that he was not dead,

Having lost nothing but his head,

They popp'd him on a horse's back,
Just like a sack,

And shot him on the guard-house floor,

To let him terminate his snore.

Next morning, when our tippling bard

Had got his senses,

They brought a coach into the yard,

And drove him off to answer his offences,

Before the judge of the police,

Who made a mighty fuss and clamour ;

But, like some justices of peace,

Who know as much of law as grammar,

Was an egregious ninny-hammer.

έσ

"Well, fellow," cried the magistrate,

"What have you got to say for boozing, Then lying in the streets and snoozing

All night in that indecent state?"

66

Sir," quoth the culprit to the man of law, "It was a frost last night in town, And tired of tripping, sliding, and slipping, Methought I might as well lie down, And wait until there came a thaw." "Pooh! nonsense! psha! Imprisonment must be the lot Of such a vagabond and sot.

-

But tell me, fellow, what's your name ?”"Piron."- "The dramatist?""The same." "Ah, well, well, well, Monsieur Piron,

Pray take your hat and quit the court,
For wags like you must have their sport;
But recollect, when you are gone,
You'll owe me one, and thus I show it:
I have a brother who's a poet,

And lives as you do by his wits.".
Quoth Piron, "that can never pass,
For I've a brother who's an ass,
So we are quits."

The Farmer and the Counsellor.

A COUNSEL in the Common Pleas,
Who was esteem'd a mighty wit,
Upon the strength of a chance hit
Amid a thousand flippancies,

And his occasional bad jokes

In bullying, bantering, browbeating,
Ridiculing and maltreating

Women or other timid folks,

In a late cause resolved to hoax