d loves
the romantic. Pardon, Miss, if the story has not excitement enough for
you, who have sat over the needle and the muslin, and having had so
much of life's prose, gasp after romance.

"Behead her!" says the dress-maker.

There sits a figure in a dressing gown--this oriental dress of the
North, for the lordly minion, the petty prince, the rich brewer's son,
&c., &c., &c. It is not to be learned from the dressing gown, nor from
that lordly look and the fine smile around the mouth, to what stem he
belongs: his demands on Scherezade are just the same as the
dress-maker's: he must be excited, he must be brought to shudder all
down the vertebrae, through the very spine: he must be crammed with
mysteries, such as those which Spriez knew how to connect and thicken.

Scherezade is beheaded!

Wise, enlightened Sultan! Thou comest in the form of a schoolboy; thou
bearest the Romans and Greeks together in a satchel on thy back, as
Atlas sustained the world. Do not cast an evil eye upon poor
Scherezade; do not judge her before thou hast learned thy lesson, and
art a child again,--do not behead Scherezade!

Young, full-dressed diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the
badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely
master, speak mildly of Scherezade's name! speak of her in French,
that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one
strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the
brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled in the sweet,
absolving _charmant_!

Mighty annihilator and elevator!--the newspapers' Zeus--thou weekly,
monthly, and daily journals' Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger!
Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou
art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a _suite_ of
thine own clique. Do not behead her!

We will see one figure more--the most dangerous of them all; he with
the praise on his lips, like that of the stormy river's swell--the
blind enthusiast. The water in which Scherezade dipped her fingers, is
for him a fountain of Castalia; the throne he erects to her apotheosis
becomes her scaffold.

This is the poet's symbol--paint it:

"THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."

But why none of the worthier figures--the candid, the honest, and the
beautiful? They come also, and on them Scherezade fixes her eye.
Encouraged by them, she boldly raises her proud head aloft towards the
stars,