the age
of talking merely irreverent nonsense. Meanwhile, so evident is the
success (sole test of merit) which has attended the new method, that
it is worth while trying whether it will not be as taking in the novel
as it is in the chapel; and therefore the reader is requested to pay
special attention to the following paragraph, modelled carefully after
the exordiums of a famous Irish preacher, now drawing crowded houses
at the West End of Town. As thus;--"It is the pleasant month of May,
when, as in old Chaucer's time, the--

"Smale foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye
So priketh hem nature in their corages.
Then longen folk to goe on pilgrimages,
And specially from every shire's end
Of Englelond, to Exeter-hall they wend,"

till the low places of the Strand blossom with white cravats, those
lilies of the valley, types of meekness and humility, at least in the
pious palmer--and why not of similar virtues in the undertaker, the
concert-singer, the groom, the tavern-waiter, the croupier at
the gaming-table, and Frederick Augustus Lord Scoutbush, who,
white-cravated like the rest, is just getting into his cab at the door
of the Never-mind-what Theatre, to spend an hour at Kensington before
sauntering in to Lady M----'s ball?

Why not, I ask, at least in the case of little Scoutbush? For
Guardsman though he be, coming from a theatre and going to a ball,
there is meekness and humility in him at this moment, as well as in
the average of the white-cravated gentlemen who trotted along that
same pavement about eleven o'clock this forenoon. Why should not his
white cravat, like theirs, be held symbolic of that fact? However,
Scoutbush belongs rather to the former than the latter of Chaucer's
categories; for a "smale foule" he is, a little bird-like fellow, who
maketh melodie also, and warbles like a cock-robin; we cannot liken
him to any more dignified songster. Moreover, he will sleep all night
with open eye; for he will not be in bed till five to-morrow morning;
and pricked he is, and that sorely, in his courage; for he is as much,
in love as his little nature can be, with the new actress, La Signora
Cordifiamma, of the Never-mind-what Theatre.

How exquisitely, now (for this is one of the rare occasions in which
a man is permitted to praise himself), is established hereby an
unexpected bond of linked sweetness long drawn out between things
which had, ere they came beneath the magic to