have a right to speak with pity of a sovereign who was renowned for so much beauty and so much misfortune. But as for giving any opinion on her conduct, saying that she was good or bad, or indifferent, goodness forbid! We have agreed we will not be censorious. Let us have a game at cards at écarté, if you please. You deal. I ask for cards. I lead the deuce of clubs. . . . although we hold our tongues; and, after all, my good soul, what will their scandal matter a hundred years hence? clear that the good things which we say of our neighbors don't fructify, but somehow perish in the ground where they are dropped, whilst the evil words are wafted by all the winds of scandal, take root in all soils, and flourish amazingly-seeing, I say, that this conversation does not give us a fair chance, suppose we give up censoriousness altogether, and decline uttering our opinions about Brown, Jones, and Robinson (and Mesdames What? there is no deuce! Deuce B., J., and R.) at all. We may be take it! What? People will go on mistaken about every one of them, as, talking about their neighbors, and please goodness, those anecdote-mon- won't have their mouths stopped by gers against whom I have uttered my cards, or ever so much microscopes meek protest have been mistaken and aquariums? Ah, my poor dear about me. We need not go to the Mrs. Candor, I agree with you. By extent of saying that Mrs. Manning the way, did you ever see any thing was an amiable creature, much mis- like Lady Godiva Trotter's dress last understood; and Jack Thurtell a gal-night? People will go on chattering, lant, unfortunate fellow, not near so black as he was painted; but we will try and avoid personalities altogether in talk, won't we? We will range the fields of science, dear madam, and communicate to each other the pleasing results of our studies. We will, SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. if you please, examine the infinitesimal wonders of nature through the Nor long since, at a certain banmicroscope. We will cultivate ento-quet, I had the good fortune to sit by mology. We will sit with our arms round each other's waists on the pons asinorum, and see the stream of mathematics flow beneath. We will take refuge in cards, and play at "beggar my neighbor," not abuse my neighbor. We will go to the Zoological Gardens and talk freely about the gorilla and his kindred, but not talk about people who can talk in their turn. Suppose we praise the High Church? we offend the Low Church. The Broad Church? High and Low are both offended. What do you think of Lord Derby as a politician? and what is your opinion of Lord Palmerston? If you please, will you play me those lovely variations of" In my cottage near a wood?" It is a charming air (you know it in French, I suppose? Ah! te dirai-je maman!) and was a favorite with poor Marie Antoinette. I say "poor" because I Doctor Polymathesis, who knows every thing, and who, about the time when the claret made its appearance, mentioned that old dictum of the grumbling Oxford Don, that "ALL CLARET would be port if it could!" Imbibing a bumper of one or the other not ungratefully, I thought to myself, Here surely, Mr. Roundabout, is a good text for one of your reverence's sermons." Let us apply to the human race, dear brethren, what is here said of the vintages of Portugal and Gascony, and we shall have no difficulty in perceiving how many clarets aspire to be ports in their way; how most men and women of our acquaintance, how we ourselves, are Aquitanians giving ourselves Lusitanian airs; how we wish to have credit for being stronger, braver, more beautiful, more worthy, than we really are. а Nay, the beginning of this hypoc- | into the district where humbug and vanity begin, and there the moralizer catches you, and makes an example of you. For instance, in a certain novel in another place, my friend Mr. Talbot Twysden is mentioned man whom you and I know to be a wretched ordinaire, but who persists in treating himself as if he was the finest '20 port. In our Britain there are hundreds of men like him; forever striving to swell beyond their natural size, to strain beyond their natural strength, to step beyond their natural stride. Search, search within your own waistcoats, dear brethren you know in your hearts, which of your ordinaire qualities you would risy -a desire to excel, a desire to be hearty, fruity, generous, strengthimparting is a virtuous and noble ambition; and it is most difficult for a man in his own case, or his neighbor's, to say at what point this ambition transgresses the boundary of virtue, and becomes vanity, pretence, and self-seeking. You are a poor man, let us say, showing a bold face to adverse fortune, and wearing a confident aspect. Your purse is very narrow, but you owe no man a penny; your means are scanty, but your wife's gown is decent; your old coat well brushed; your children at a good school; you grumble to no one; ask favors of no one; truckle to no neigh-pass off, and fain consider as first-rate bors on account of their superior rank, or (a worse, and a meaner, and a more common crime still) envy none for their better fortune. To all outward appearances you are as well to do as your neighbors, who have thrice your income. There may be in this case some little mixture of pretension in your life and behavior. You certainly do put on a smiling face whilst fortune is pinching you. Your wife and girls, so smart and neat at evening parties, are cutting, patching, and cobbling all day to make both ends of life's haberdashery meet. You give a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but are content yourself with a glass of whiskey and water. You avoid a cab, saying that of all things you like to walk home after dinner (which you know, my good friend, is a fib). •I grant you that in this scheme of life there does enter ever so little hypocrisy; that this claret is loaded, as it were; but your desire to portify your self is amiable, is pardonable, is perhaps honorable: and were there no other hypocrisies than yours in the world, we should be a set of worthy fellows; and sermonizers, moralizers, satirizers, would have to hold their tongues, and go to some other trade to get a living. But you know you will step over that boundary line of virtue and modesty, port. And why not you yourself, Mr. Preacher ? says the congregation. Dearly beloved, neither in nor out of this pulpit do I profess to be bigger, or cleverer, or wiser, or better than any of you. A short while since, a certain Reviewer announced that I gave myself great pretensions as a philosopher. I a philosopher! I advance pretensions! My dear Saturday friend, And you? Don't you teach every thing to everybody? and punish the naughty boys if they don't learn as you bid them? You teach politics to Lord John and Mr. Gladstone. You teach poets how to write; painters, how to paint; gentlemen, manners; and opera-dancers, how to pirouette. I was not a little amused of late by an instance of the modesty of our Saturday friend, who, more Athenian than the Athenians, and àpropos of a Greek book by a Greek author, sat down and gravely showed the Greek gentleman how to write his own language. No, I do not, as far as I know, try to be port at all; but offer in these presents, a sound genuine ordinaire, at 18s. per doz. let us say, grown on my own hill-side, and offered de bon cœur to those who will sit down under my tonnelle, and have a halfhour's drink and gossip. It is none of your hot porto, my friend. I know there is much better and stronger liquor elsewhere. Some pronounce it sour: some say it is thin; some that it has woefully lost its flavor. This may or may not be true. There are good and bad years; years that surprise everybody; years of which the produce is small and bad, or rich and plentiful. But if my tap is not genuine it is naught, and no man should give himself the trouble to drink it. I do not even say that I would be port if I could; knowing that port (by which I would imply much stronger, deeper, richer, and more durable liquor than my vineyard can furnish) is not relished by all palates or suitable to all heads. We will assume, then, dear brother, that you and I are tolerably modest people; and, ourselves being thus out of the question, proceed to show how pretentious our neighbors are, and how very many of them would be port if they could. Suppose Goldsmith had knocked him up at three in the morning and proposed a boat to Greenwich, as Topham Beauclerc and his friends did, would he have said, What, my boy, are you for a frolic? I'm with you!" and gone and put on his clothes? Rather he would have pitched poor Goldsmith down stairs. He would have liked to be port if he could. Of course we wouldn't. Our opinion of the Portugal grape is known. It grows very high, and is very sour, and we don't go for that kind of grape at all. "I was walking with Mr. Fox ". and sure this anecdote comes very pat after the grapes- "I was walking with Mr. Fox in the Louvre,' says Benjamin West (apud some paper I have just been reading), "and I remarked how many people turned round to look at me. This shows the respect of the French for the fine arts." This is a curious instance of a very small claret indeed, which im agined itself to be port of the strong est body. There are not many instances of a faith so deep, so simple so satisfactory, as this. I have me! many who would like to be port; but with few of the Gascon sort, wha absolutely believed they were port. George III. believed in West's port and thought Reynolds'soverrated stuff When I saw West's pictures at Phil adelphia, I looked at them with as. tonishment and awe. Hide, blushing glory, hide your head under you old night-cap. O immortality! is this the end of you? Did any of you, my dear brethren, ever try and read Blackmore's Poems," or Epics of Baour-Lormian," or Henriade," or — - what shall we say? Have you never seen a small man from college placed amongst great folk, and giving himself the airs of a man of fashion? He goes back to his common room with fond reminiscences of Ermine Castle or Strawberry Hall. He writes to the dear countess, to say that dear Lord Lollypop is getting on very well at St. Boniface, and that the accident which he met with in a scuffle with an inebriated bargeman only showed his spirit and honor, and will not permanently disfigure his lordship's nose. He gets his clothes from dear Lollypop's London tailor, and wears a mauve or magenta tie when he rides out to see the hounds. A love" of fashionable people is a weakness, I do not say of all, but of some tutors. Witness that Eton tutor t'other day, who intimated that in Cornhill we could not understand the perfect purity, delicacy, and refinement of those genteel families who sent their sons to Eton. O usher, mon ami! Old Sam Johnson, who, too, had been an usher in his early life, kept a little of that weakness always. "The "The Pollok's "Course of Time "? They were thought to be more lasting than brass by some people, and where are they now? And our masterpieces of literature -our ports-that, if not immortal, at any rate are to last their fifty, their hundred years — oh, sirs, don't you think a very small cellar will hold them? man, not a braggart or boaster, to be put upon that heroic perch must be painful to him. Lord George Bentinck, I suppose, being in the midst of the family park in Cavendish Square, may conceive that he has a right to remain in his place. But look at William of Cumberland, with his hat cocked over his eye, prancing behind Lord George on his Romannosed charger; he, depend on it, would be for getting off his horse if he had the permission. He did not hesitate about trifles, as we know; but he was a very truth-telling and honorable soldier: and as for heroic rank and statuesque dignity, I would wager a dozen of '20 port against a. bottle of pure and sound Bordeaux, at 18s. per dozen (bottles included), that he never would think of claiming any such absurd distinction. They have got a statue of Thomas Moore at Dublin, I hear. Is he on horseback? Some men should have, say, a fifty Those poor people in brass, on pedestals, hectoring about Trafalgar Square and that neighborhood, don't you think many of them apart even from the ridiculous execution -cut rather a ridiculous figure, and that we are too eager to set up our ordinaire heroism and talent for port? A Duke of Wellington or two I will grant, though even of these idols a moderate supply will be sufficient. Some years ago, a famous and witty French critic was in London, with whom I walked the streets. I am ashamed to say that I informed him (being in hopes that he was about to write some papers regarding the manners and customs of this country) that all the statues he saw represented the Duke of Wellington. That on the arch opposite Apsley House? the Duke in a cloak, and cocked-hat, on horseback. That behind Apsley House in an airy fig-leaf costume? the Duke again. That in Cockspur Street? the Duke with a pigtail-years' lease of glory. After a while and so on. I showed him an army some gentlemen now in brass should of Dukes. There are many bronze go to the melting furnace, and reheroes who after a few years look al- appear in some other gentleman's ready as foolish, awkward, and out shape. Lately I saw that Melville of place as a man, say at Shoolbred's column rising over Edinburgh; come, or Swan and Edgar's. For example, good men and true, don't you feel a those three Grenadiers in Pall Mall, little awkward and uneasy when you who have been up only a few months, walk under it? Who was this to don't you pity those unhappy house- stand in heroic places? and is yon the hold troops, who have to stand frown- man whom Scotchmen most delight ing and looking fierce there; and to honor? I must own deferentially think they would like to step down that there is a tendency in North and go to barracks? That they Britain to over-esteem its heroes. fought very bravely there is no doubt; Scotch ale is very good and strong, but so did the Russians fight very but it is not stronger than all the bravely; and the French fight very other beer in the world, as some Scotbravely; and so did Colonel Jones and tish patriots would insist. When there the 99th, and Colonel Brown and the has been a war, and stout old Sandy 100th; and I say again that ordinaire Sansculotte returns home from India should not give itself port airs, and or Crimea, what a bagpiping, shoutthat an honest ordinaire would blushing, hurraying, and self-glorification to be found swaggering so. I am takes place round about him! You sure if you could consult the Duke would fancy, to hear Mc Orator after of York, who is impaled on his dinner, that the Scotch had fought column between the two clubs, and all the battles, killed all the Russians, ask his late Royal Highness whether Indian rebels, or what not. he thought he ought to remain there, Cupar-Fife, there's a little inn called he would say no. A brave, worthy "The Battle of Waterloo," and what In do you think the sign is? "The "Well, finest statue in the world. How much claret that would be port if it could is handed about in every society! In the House of Commons what small-beer orators try to pass for strong? Stay: have I a spite against any one? It is a fact that the wife of the member for Bungay has left off asking me and Mrs. Roundabout to her evening parties. Now is the time to have a slap at him. I will say that he was always over And as we are talking of bragging, and I am on my travels, can I forget one mighty republic one two mighty republics, where people are notoriously fond of passing off their claret for port? I am very glad, for the sake of a kind friend, that there is a great and influential party in the United, and, I trust, in the Confederate States, who believe that Cataw-rated, and that now he is lamentably ba wine is better than the best Champagne. Opposite that famous old White House at Washington, whereof I shall ever have a grateful memory, they have set up an equestrian statue of General Jackson, by a selftaught American artist of no inconsiderable genius and skill. At an evening party a member of Congress seized me in a corner of the room, and asked me if I did not think this was the finest equestrian statue in the world? How was I to deal with this plain question, put to me in a corner? I was bound to reply, and accordingly said that I did not think it was the * Written in July, 1861. falling off even from what he has been. I will back the Member for Stoke Poges against him; and show that the dashing young Member for Islington is a far sounder man than either. Have I any little literary animosities? Of course not. Men of letters never have. Otherwise, how I could serve out a competitor here, make a face over his works, and show that his would-be port is very meagre ordinaire indeed! Nonsense, man! Why so squeamish? Do they spare you! Now you have the whip in your hand, won't you lay on? You used to be a pretty whip enough as a young man, and liked it too. Is there no enemy who would be the better for |