a cowl; his rusted scepter swaying over falling
towers, and crumbling mounds; full of the superstitious past; askance,
eyeing the suspicious time to come;--the king of Hapzaboro; portly,
pleasant; a lover of wild boar's meat; a frequent quaffer from the
can; in his better moods, much fancying solid comfort;--the eight-and-
thirty banded kings, chieftains, seigniors, and oligarchies of the
broad hill and dale of Tutoni; clubbing together their domains, that
none might wrest his neighbor's; an earnest race; deep thinkers,
deeper drinkers; long pipes, long heads; their wise ones given to
mystic cogitations, and consultations with the devil;--the twin kings
of Zandinavia; hardy, frugal mountaineers; upright of spine and heart;
clad in skins of bears;--the king of Jutlanda; much like their
Highnesses of Zandinavia; a seal-skin cap his crown; a fearless sailor
of his frigid seas;--the king of Muzkovi; a shaggy, icicled White-bear
of a despot in the north; said to reign over millions of acres of
glaciers; had vast provinces of snow-drifts, and many flourishing
colonies among the floating icebergs. Absolute in his rule as
Predestination in metaphysics, did he command all his people to give
up the ghost, it would be held treason to die last. Very precise and
foppish in his imperial tastes was this monarch. Disgusted with the
want of uniformity in the stature of his subjects, he was said to
nourish thoughts of killing off all those below his prescribed
standard--six feet, long measure. Immortal souls were of no account in
his fatal wars; since, in some of his serf-breeding estates, they were
daily manufactured to order.

Now, to all the above-mentioned monarchs, old Bello would frequently
dispatch heralds; announcing, for example, his unalterable resolution,
to espouse the cause of this king, against that; at the very time,
perhaps, that their Serene Superfluities, instead of crossing spears,
were touching flagons. And upon these occasions, the kings would often
send back word to old Bello, that instead of troubling himself with
their concerns, he might far better attend to his own; which, they
hinted, were in a sad way, and much needed reform.

The royal old warrior's pretext for these and all similar proceedings,
was the proper adjustment in Porpheero, of what he facetiously styled
the "Equipoise of Calabashes;" which he stoutly swore was essential to
the security of the various tribes in that country.

"But who put the bal