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But disguised emperors are not common nowadays. You don't turn away monarchs from your door, any more than angels, unawares. Consider, though, how many a good fellow you may shut out and sneer upon! what an immense deal of pleasure, frankness, kindness, good-fellowship we forego for the sake of our confounded gentility, and respect for outward show! Instead of placing our society upon an honest footing, we make our aim almost avowedly sordid. Love is of necessity banished from your society when you measure all your guests by a money-standard. I think of all this - a harmless man seeing a good-natured-looking, jolly woman in the boxes yonder, who thought herself once too great a person to associate with the likes of me. If I give myself airs to my neighbor may I think of this too, and be a little more humble! And you, honest friend, who read this - have you ever pooh-poohed a man as good as you? If you fall into the society of people whom you are pleased to call your inferiors, did you ever sneer? If so, change I into Ü, and the fable is narrated for your own benefit, by your obedient servant,

SOLOMON PACIFICO.

ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING A FOGY.

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HILST I was riding the other day by the beautiful Serpentine River upon my excellent friend Heavyside's gray cob, and in company of the gallant and agreeable Augustus Toplady, a carriage passed from which looked out a face of such remarkable beauty that Augustus and myself quickened our pace to follow the vehicle, and to keep for a while those charming features in view. My beloved and unknown young friend who peruse these lines, it was very likely your face which attracted your humble servant; recollect whether you were not in the Park upon the day I allude to, and if you were, whom else could I mean but you? I don't know your name; I have forgotten the arms on the carriage, or whether there were any; and as for women's dresses, who can remember them? but your dear kind countenance was so pretty and good-humored and pleasant to look at that it remains to this day faithfully engraven on my heart, and I feel sure that you are as good as you are handsome. Almost all handsome women are good: they cannot choose but be good and gentle with those sweet features and that charming graceful figure. A day in which one sees a very pretty woman should always be noted as a holyday with a man, and marked with a white stone. In this way, and at this season in London, to be sure, such a day comes seven times in the week, and our calendar, like that of the Roman Catholics, is all Saints' days.

Toplady, then, on his chestnut horse, with his glass in his eye, and the tips of his shiny boots just touching the

stirrup, and your slave, the present writer, rode after your carriage, and looked at you with such notes of admiration expressed in their eyes, that you remember you blushed, you smiled, and then began to talk to that very nice-looking elderly lady in the front seat, who of course was your Mamma. You turned out of the ride-it was time to go home and dress for dinner, you were gone. Good luck go with you, and with all fair things which thus come and pass away!

Top caused his horse to cut all sorts of absurd capers and caracoles by the side of your carriage. He made it dance upon two legs, then upon other two, then as if he would jump over the railings and crush the admiring nursery-maids and the rest of the infantry. I should think he got his animal from Batty's, and that, at a crack of Widdicomb's whip, he could dance a quadrille. He ogled, he smiled, he took off his hat to a Countess's carriage that happened to be passing in the other line, and so showed his hair he grinned, he kissed his little finger-tips and flung them about as if he would shake then off-whereas the other party on the gray cob- the old gentleman powdered along at a resolute trot, and never once took his respectful eyes off you while you continued in the ring.

When you were gone (you see by the way in which I linger about you still that I am unwilling to part with you) Toplady turned round upon me with a killing triumphant air, and stroked that impudent little tuft he has on his chin, and said "I say, old boy, it was the chestnut she was looking at, and not the gway." And I make no doubt he thinks you are in love with him to this minute.

"You silly young jackanapes," said I, "what do I care whether she was looking at the gray or the chestnut? I was thinking about the girl; you were thinking about yourself, and be hanged to your vanity!" And with this thrust in his little chest, I flatter myself I upset young Toplady, that triumphant careering rider.

It was natural that he should wish to please; that is, that he should wish other people to admire him. Augustus Toplady is young (still) and lovely. It is not until a late period of life that a genteel young fellow, with a Grecian nose and a suitable waist and whiskers, begins to admire other people besides himself.

That, however, is the great advantage which a man possesses whose morning of life is over, whose reason is not

taken prisoner by any kind of blandishments, and who knows and feels that he is a FOGY. As an old buck is an odious sight, absurd, and ridiculous before gods and men; cruelly, but deservedly, quizzed by you young people, who are not in the least duped by his youthful airs or toilet artifices, so an honest, good-natured, straightforward, middle-aged, easily-pleased Fogy is a worthy and amiable member of society, and a man who gets both respect and liking.

Even in the lovely sex, who has not remarked how painful is that period of a woman's life when she is passing out of her bloom, and thinking about giving up her position as a beauty? What sad injustice and stratagems she has to perpetrate during the struggle! She hides away her daughters in the school-room, she makes them wear cruel pinafores, and dresses herself in the garb which they ought to assume. She is obliged to distort the calendar, and to resort to all sorts of schemes and arts to hide, in her own person, the august and respectable marks of time. Ah! what is this revolt against nature but impotent blasphemy? Is not Autumn beautiful in its appointed season, that we are to be ashamed of her and paint her yellowing leaves pea-green? Let us, I say, take the fall of the year as it was made, serenely and sweetly, and await the time when Winter comes and the nights shut in. I know, for my part, many ladies who are far more agreeable and more beautiful too, now that they are no longer beauties; and, by converse, I have no doubt that Toplady, about whom we were speaking just now, will be a far pleasanter person when he has given up the practice, or desire, of killing the other sex, and has sunk into a mellow repose as an old bachelor or a married man.

The great and delightful advantage that a man enjoys in the world, after he has abdicated all pretensions as a conqueror and enslaver of females, and both formally, and of his heart, acknowledges himself to be a Fogy, is that he now comes for the first time to enjoy and appreciate duly the society of women. For a young man about town, there is only one woman in the whole city (at least very few indeed of the young Turks, let us hope, dare to have two or three strings to their wicked bows)- he goes to ball after ball in pursuit of that one person; he sees no other eyes but hers; hears no other voice; cares for no other petticoat but that in which his charmer dances: he pur

sues her—is refused is accepted and jilted; breaks his heart, mends it of course, and goes on again after some other beloved being, until in the order of fate and nature he marries and settles, or remains unmarried, free, and a Fogy. Until then we know nothing of women the kindness and refinement and wit of the elders; the artless prattle and dear little chatter of the young ones; all these are hidden from us until we take the Fogy's degree: nay, even perhaps from married men whose age and gravity entitle them to rank amongst Fogies: for every woman who is worth anything will be jealous of her husband up to seventy or eighty, and always prevent his intercourse. with other ladies. But an old bachelor, or better still, an old widower, has this delightful entrée into the female world he is free to come; to go; to listen; to joke; to sympathize; to talk with mamma about her plans and troubles; to pump from Miss the little secrets that gush so easily from her poor little well of a heart; the ladies do not gêner themselves before him, and he is admitted to their mysteries like the Doctor, the Confessor, or the Kislar Aga.

What man, who can enjoy this pleasure and privilege, ought to be indifferent to it? If the society of one woman is delightful, as the young fellows think, and justly, how much more delightful is the society of a thousand! One woman, for instance, has brown eyes, and a geological or musical turn; another has sweet blue eyes, and takes, let us say, the Gorham side of the controversy at present pending; a third darling, with long fringed lashes hiding eyes of hazel, lifts them up ceiling-wards in behalf of Miss Sellon, thinks the Lord Chief Justice has hit the poor young lady very hard in publishing her letters, and proposes to quit the Church next Tuesday or Wednesday, or whenever Mr. Oriel is ready and, of course, a man may be in love with one or the other of these. But it is manifest that brown eyes will remain brown eyes to the end, and that, having no other interest but music or geology, her conversation on those points may grow more than sufficient. Sapphira, again, when she has said her say with regard to the Gorham affair, and proved that the other party are but Romanists in disguise, and who is interested on no other subject, may possibly tire you. so may Hazelia, who is working altar-cloths all day, and would desire no better martyrdom than to walk barefoot in a

VOL. II.-28

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