no favors that are
not of marketable value, to acknowledge no wealth unless it can be
counted with the five fingers? If we admit the mind to be the sole
depositary of genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not been elevated
into a temporary Elysium by the magic of the Lottery? Which of us has
not converted his ticket, or even his sixteenth share of one, into a
nest-egg of Hope, upon which he has sat brooding in the secret
roosting-places of his heart, and hatched it into a thousand fantastical
apparitions?

What a startling revelation of the passions, if all the aspirations
engendered by the Lottery could be made manifest! Many an impecuniary
epicure has gloated over his locked-up warrant for future wealth, as a
means of realizing the dream of his namesake in the "Alchemist":--

"My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,--
Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies;
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels,
Boiled i' the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl
(Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy);
And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber
Headed with diamant and carbuncle.
My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons,
Knots, goodwits, lampreys. I myself will have
The beards of barbels served; instead of salads,
Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce,
For which I'll say unto my cook, 'There's gold:
Go forth, and he a knight.'"

Many a doting lover has kissed the scrap of paper whose promissory
shower of gold was to give up to him his otherwise unattainable Danae;
Nimrods have transformed the same narrow symbol into a saddle by which
they have been enabled to bestride the backs of peerless hunters; while
nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean form into

"Rings, gauds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats,"

and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the obsequious
husband, the two-footmaned carriage, and the opera-box. By the simple
charm of this numbered and printed rag, gamesters have, for a time at
least, recovered their losses, spendthrifts have cleared off mortgages
from their estates, the imprisoned debtor has leaped over his lofty
boundary of circumscription and restraint and revelled in all the joys
of liberty and fortune, the cottage-walls have swelled out in