cot, I know of but one
elaborate celebration--that which describes, among other things,

'Tall bottles passing to and fro,
And clear-cut crystal's creamy flow,
Where vied with velvet Veuve Clicquot,
Moet and Chandon;'

as well as

'The homeward drive that came too soon
By parks and lodges bright with June,
And how we mocked the afternoon
With lazy laughter.'

Nothing, of course, is more peculiar to the Season than the devotion
displayed by Society at the shrine of Art. The Academy and the Grosvenor
are institutions without which the Season would not be itself. The
latter has not figured very conspicuously in song, but at least it has
managed to creep into one of the Gilbert-Sullivan operas, in the shape
of a rhyme to 'greenery-yallery.' Mr. Andrew Lang, too, has told us of
the critic who had

'Totter'd, since the dawn was red,
Through miles of Grosvenor Gallery;'

and, in another of his 'verses vain,' has practically limned the Gallery
itself under the guise of 'Camelot':

'In Camelot, how gray and green
The damsels dwell, how sad their teen;
In Camelot, how green and gray
The melancholy poplars sway.
I wis I wot not what they mean,
Or wherefore, passionate and lean,
The maidens mope their loves between.'

The character of Burne-Jonesian art is here very happily hit off. Happy,
too, is Mr. Lang's sketch of the Philistian features of the Academy:

'Philistia! Maids in muslin white
With flannelled oarsmen oft delight
To drift upon thy streams, and float
In Salter's most luxurious boat;
In buff and boots the cheery knight
Returns (quite safe) from Naseby fight.'

But did not Praed long ago address 'The Portrait of a Lady at the
Exhibition of the Royal Academy'? Has not Mr. Ashby-Sterry addressed
'Number One' in the said exhibition--also 'the portrait of a lady'? And,
moreover, has not Mr. Austin Dobson made the Academy the scene of one of
his brightly-written dialogues?--that in which the lady says:

'From now until we go in June
I shall hear nothing but this tune:
Whether I like Long's "Vashti," or
Like Leslie's "Naughty Kitty" more;
With all that critics, right or wrong,
Have said of Leslie or of Long.'

Among the events of every season are the fashionable marriages, one of
which is described for us by Mr. Frederick Locker in his 'St. George's,
Hanover Square.' On the subject of the belles of the season I need not
dwel