ivil Knights of the bath; the
little ribbon eager for the collar; the soldiers and seamen from India
and the Crimea marching in procession before the Queen, and receiving
from her hands the cross bearing her royal name. And, remember, there
are not only the cross wearers, but all the fathers and friends; all the
women who have prayed for their absent heroes; Harry's wife, and Tom's
mother, and Jack's daughter, and Frank's sweetheart, each of whom wears
in her heart of hearts afterwards the badge which son, father, lover,
has won by his merit; each of whom is made happy and proud, and is bound
to the country by that little bit of ribbon.

I have heard, in a lecture about George the Third, that, at his
accession, the King had a mind to establish an order for literary men.
It was to have been called the Order of Minerva--I suppose with an Owl
for a badge. The knights were to have worn a star of sixteen points, and
a yellow ribbon; and good old Samuel Johnson was talked of as President,
or Grand Cross, or Grand Owl, of the society. Now about such an order
as this there certainly may be doubts. Consider the claimants, the
difficulty of settling their claims, the rows and squabbles amongst the
candidates, and the subsequent decision of posterity! Dr. Beattie would
have ranked as first poet, and twenty years after the sublime Mr. Hayley
would, no doubt, have claimed the Grand Cross. Mr. Gibbon would not have
been eligible, on account of his dangerous freethinking opinions; and
her sex, as well as her republican sentiments, might have interfered
with the knighthood of the immortal Mrs. Catharine Macaulay. How
Goldsmith would have paraded the ribbon at Madame Cornelys's, or the
Academy dinner! How Peter Pindar would have railed at it! Fifty years
later, the noble Scott would have worn the Grand Cross and deserved it;
but Gifford would have had it; and Byron, and Shelley, and Hazlitt, and
Hunt would have been without it; and had Keats been proposed as officer,
how the Tory prints would have yelled with rage and scorn! Had the star
of Minerva lasted to our present time--but I pause, not because the idea
is dazzling, but too awful. Fancy the claimants, and the row about their
precedence! Which philosopher shall have the grand cordon?--which the
collar?--which the little scrap no bigger than a buttercup? Of the
historians--A, say,--and C, and F, and G, and S, and T,--which shall be
Companion and which Grand Owl? Of the poets, who wea