Grows harder by sullen degrees--
Time treads o'er the grave of Affection;
Sweet honey is turned into gall.
Perhaps you have no recollection
That ever you danced at our Ball.

You once could be pleased with our ballads--
To-day you have critical ears:
You once could be charmed with our salads--
Alas! you've been dining with Peers--
You trifled and flirted with many---
You've forgotten the when and the how--
There was _one_ you liked better than any--
Perhaps you've forgotten _her_ now.
But of those you remember most newly,
Of those who delight or enthrall,
None love you a quarter so truly
As some you will find at our Ball.

They tell me you've many who flatter,
Because of your wit and your song--
They tell me (and what does it matter?)
You like to be praised by the throng--
They tell me you're shadowed with laurel,
They tell me you're loved by a Blue--
They tell me you're sadly immoral,
Dear Clarence, _that_ cannot be true!
But to me you are still what I found you
Before you grew clever and tall--
And you'll think of the spell that once bound you--
And you'll come--_won't_ you come?--to our Ball!

_London Magazine._

* * * * *

PARTY.

Two dogs cannot worry one another in the streets without instantly
forming each his party among the crowd; much more then does the principle
apply to higher contests.

* * * * *

THE ANECDOTE GALLERY.

* * * * *

MOLIERE.

At the town of Pezenas they still show an elbow-chair of Moliere's (as at
Montpelier they show the gown of Rabelais,) in which the poet, it is
said, ensconced in a corner of a barber's shop, would sit for the hour
together, silently watching the air, gestures, and grimaces of the
village politicians, who, in those days, before coffee-houses were
introduced into France, used to congregate in this place of resort. The
fruits of this study may be easily discerned in those original draughts
of character from the middling and lower classes with which his pieces
everywhere abound.

Moliere's celebrated farce of _Les Precieuses Ridicules_; a piece in only
one act, but which, by its inimitable satire, effected such a revolution
in the literary taste of his countrymen, as has been accomplished by few
works of a more imposing form--may be con