In Mr. Cayley's eyes, the proof of the comparative prosperity of
England is that

"Still Queen Victoria sits upon her throne;
Our aristocracy still keep alive,
And, on the whole, may still be said to thrive,--
Tho' now and then with ducal acres groan
The honored tables of the auctioneer.
Nathless, our aristocracy is dear,
Tho' their estates go cheap; and all must own
That they still give society its tone."--p. 16.

He proceeds in these terms:

"Our baronets of late appear to be
Unjustly snubbed and talked and written down;
Partly from follies of Sir Something Brown,
Stickling for badges due to their degree,
And partly that their honor's late editions
Have been much swelled with surgeons and physicians;
For 'honor hath small skill in surgery,'
And skill in surgery small honor."--p. 17.

What "honor" is here meant? and against whom is the taunt
implied?--against the "surgeons and physicians," or against the
depreciation of them. Surely the former can hardly have been
intended. The sentence will bear to be cleared of some ambiguity, or
else to be cleared off altogether.

Our introduction to Sir Reginald Mohun, Lord of Nornyth Place, and of
"an income clear of 20,000 pounds," and to his friends Raymond St.
Oun, De Lacy, Wilton, Tancarville, and Vivian--(for the author's
names are aristocratic, like his predilections)--is effected through
the medium of a stanza, new, we believe, in arrangement, though
differing but slightly from the established octave, and of verses so
easy and flowing as to make us wonder less at the promise of

"provision plenty
For cantos twelve, or may be, four and twenty,"

than at Mr. Cayley's assertion that he "Can never get along at all in
prose."

The incidents, as might be expected of a first canto, are neither
many nor important, and will admit of compression into a very small
compass.

Sir Reginald, whose five friends had arrived at Nornyth Place late on
the preceding night, is going over the grounds with them in a
shooting party after a late breakfast. St. Oun expresses a wish to
"prowl about the place" in preference, not feeling in the mood for
the required exertion.

"'Of lazy dogs the laziest ever fate
Set on two useless legs you surely are,
And born beneath some wayward sauntering star
To sit for ever swinging on a gate,
And laugh at wiser people passing through.'
So spake the bard De Lacy: for th