nd a seat beside
those littered under the swart Dog-Star of India? Or is it to be the
mandragora of pension, that he may sleep out the great gap of _ennui_
between this life and something better? How lonely the Government of
India would feel! How the world would forget the Government of India!
Voices would ask:--

Do ye sit there still in slumber
In gigantic Alpine rows?
The black poppies out of number
Nodding, dripping from your brows
To the red lees of your wine--
And so kept alive and fine.

Sometimes I think that Ali Baba should be satisfied with the
oblivion-mantle of knighthood and relapse into dingy respectability in
the Avilion of Brompton or Bath; but since he has taken to wearing
stars the accompanying itch for blood and fame has come:--

How doth the greedy K.C.B.
Delight to brag and fight,
And gather medals all the day
And wear them all the night.

The fear of being out-medalled and out-starred stings him:--

[Consimili ratione ab eodem saepe timore
Macerat invidia, ante oculos ilium esse polentem,
Illum aspectari, claro qui incedit honore,
Ipsi se in tenebris volvi caenoque queruntur
Insereunt partim statuarum et nominis ergo.]

Thus the desire to go hustling up the hill to the Temple of Fame with
the other starry hosts impels him forward. If you mix yourself up with
K.C.B.'s and raise your platform of ambition, you are just where you
were at the A B C of your career. Living on a table-land, you
experience no sensation of height. For the intoxicating delights of
elevation you require a solitary pinnacle, some lonely eminence. Aut
Caesar, aut nullus; whether in the zenith or the Nadir of the world's
favour.

But how much more comfortable in the cold season than the chill
splendours of the pinnacles of fame, where "pale suns unfelt at
distance roll away," is a comfortable bungalow on the plains, with a
little mulled claret after dinner. Here I think Ali Baba will be
found, hidden from his creditors, the reading world, in the warm light
of thought, singing songs unbidden till a few select cronies are
wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears they heeded not--before the
mulled claret.

To this symposium the A.-D.-C.-in-Waiting has invited himself on
behalf of the Empire. He will sing the Imperial Anthem composed by Mr.
Eastwick, and it will be translated into archaic Persian by an
imperial Munshi for