s fair foretaste I'm enjoying.
The new god now sits beside ye,
Take the gifts he will provide ye!
He's your young Orbilian schooler,
Your Hereditary Ruler!"
(The Brandenburgers bellow loud applause.)
"_My_ course is right, and glorious is _my_ Cause!!!"
The Prince, the god unable to restrain,
Rose from his chair,
With Jovian air,
And, hanging up his thunderbolts with care,
What time his eagle gave a gruesome glare,
The nectar gulped again and yet again:
Then stooping his horned helmet firm to jam on,
Voted himself the New God--Jupiter-(G)Ammon!

* * * * *

"Let ALEXANDER yield the prize
To WILHELM of the Iron Crown;
_He_ raised himself unto the skies,
_I_ bring Olympus _down_!!!"

* * * * *

LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

No. XI.--TO PLAUSIBILITY.

MY DEAR PLAU,

I SHOULD be the most ungrateful dog if I failed to acknowledge the pleasure
I have received during my life from the society of your friends and
_proteges_. I don't speak of mere material, meat-and-money advantages.
Probably, if a strict account could be stated, it might be found that in
these paltry matters a balance, large or small, was still due to me. Who
knows? Strict accounts are hateful; and even if I did lose here and there I
did it, I fancy, with my eyes open, and was not sorry to indulge these
gentlemen with the idea that their fascinations had conquered me. No. What
I speak of is rather the genuine pleasure I have derived from some of the
finest acting (in ordinary life, not on the boards) that the world ever
saw, acting in which I protest that the tears, the sighs, the misery, the
gallantry, the courage, the loyal sentiments and the honourable promises
all rang with so sincere a sound that the very actor himself was subdued
like the dyer's hand to the colours he worked in, until he believed himself
to be the most unjustly persecuted of mankind, the most upright of
gentlemen, or whatever the special emotion he simulated required that he
should seem to be for the moment. That he might possibly be what, as a
matter of fact, he often was, a rogue and a knave, mattered little to me at
the time. He was evidently himself ignorant of his potentialities, and in
any case they could not spoil my aesthetic enjoyment of a notable
performance. And after all who is to undertake to draw the line betwe