Beneath each wing, before our trip,

I popp❜d a golden vase of nectar,
And I for one should like a sip;
What says our worshipful director?
The proposition, 'twas decreed,
Redounded to the mover's glory,
So down they sate upon the mead,
And plied the flagon con amore;
But not reflecting that the draught

With air of earth was mix'd and muddled,
Before the second vase was quaff'd,

They all became completely fuddled.

Now reeling, wrangling, they proceed,
Each loudly backing his opinion,
And 'stead of letting Justice lead,

All struggle fiercely for dominion:
Whereat her sword in wrath she draws,
And throws it in her scales with fury,
Maintaining that the rightful cause
Requires no other judge and jury.

Fortune, purloining Cupid's darts,
Tips them with gold for sordid suitors,
Making sad havoc in the hearts

Of matrimonial computers;
While Love on Fortune's wheel apace

Plagues mortals with incessant changes,

Gives flying glimpses of his face,

Then presto! pass !-away he ranges.

Their pranks, their squabbles, day by day
Gave censurers a bitter handle,

Till Jove impatient of their stay,

And anxious to arrest the scandal, Bade Fortune-Justice-Love return; But to atone for their miscarriage, Lest men for substitutes should yearn,

He sent them down Luck, Law, and Marriage.

THE LAST OF THE FOOLS.

"This fellow 's wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time ;

And like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice
As full of labour as a wise man's art!
For Folly, that he wisely shows, is fit,
And wise men, folly-fallen, taint their wit.

Twelfth Night.

THE reader is requested not to be under any apprehensions; nothing personal is intended either to himself or his friends: there is no fear that stultiloquence shall be hushed, or of the race of fools becoming extinct-Heaven forefend! for in that case our occupation would be gone indeed, and we periodicalists, who live to shoot folly as it flies, might cease to extract quills from one goose in order to point them against another. The last man of the genus can never be ascertained until the conclusion of the world; it is of the last of a species that we are about to speak,-of one who still lives, and will close in his person a race and a profession long since thought to have been extinct; of one who, in the pride of his former office, and of his octogenarian survival of all his competitors, has ordered this inscription to be engraved upon his

tombstone-"Here lies THE LAST OF THE COURT

FOOLS."

A Court is altogether such a factitious and unnatural piece of business, its monotony is productive of such an awful and overwhelming ennui, that men have been obliged to devise various expedients as a recreation, whereby they might strengthen themselves to undergo a new infliction of the old stiff, solemn, ceremonious, stately stupidity. These relaxations have assumed different modifications according to the characteristics of age and country. Having a plebeian penchant for republics, the ancient Greeks had no necessity for courtly amusements, and contented themselves with exalting the glory of their country by advancing the arts and sciences, and imitating the unaccomplished homeliness of Themistocles, who, though he could not play upon a fiddle, knew how to convert a small town into a great State. When Pericles was disposed to unbend, he invited Socrates, Plato, and other philosophers, to such a symposium as Xenophon has described; and passed his hours of dalliance with Aspasia, the most learned woman of her age, from whom he took lessons in oratory and literature as well as love. The Roman Emperors diversified their satiety of enjoyment in a more courtly manner, by a succession of pleasant and piquant pastimes, from the laceration of flies to the butchering of gladiators. In the days of chivalry it was a sport of the great to case themselves in armour, hammer at one another's heads with battle-axes to try which was the thickest, roll the rider and his horse

in the dust, or endeavour to drive their lance through the bars of the visor into the bull's eye of their friend's sconce, as Sir James Montgomery served the French king; not that they were ever in earnest, but that these exploits were reckoned hugely comical, furiously frolicsome, and so irresistibly entertaining, that, whatever happened, the parties were bound to look upon the whole proceeding as raillery and badinage. Over these practical jokes presided the ladies, (bless their tender hearts!) "whose bright eyes rain influence, and judge the prize" for every infliction, from a broken leg, a sliced cheek, or a luxated shoulder, to an adversary slain outright. It may be questioned whether our modern belles know half so much of carving, with all the assistance of the plates in Mrs. Rundle's Cookery-book.

Seated in a circle, with their legs crossed, smoking their hookahs or drinking coffee, the Caliphs and grandees of Arabia relieve the tedium of greatness by listening to professional story-tellers,-a practice to which we owe the Thousand and One Nights, and the delightful tales of the inexhaustible Princess Scheherazade. The Grand Signior and his Mufti recreate themselves by chewing opium and gazing upon the stimulating symmetry of dancing girls, until they have at the same time intoxicated both the senses and the imagination. Upon every stateday levee and drawing-room, in some of the old Scandinavian Courts, there was no amusement so much in vogue, and reckoned such established bon ton, as drinking wine out of the sculls of their ene

mies. Many of the sable sovereigns of Africa employ the same material in architecture, which, if the averments of travellers may be credited, forms capital pyramids, pillars, and obelisks, in front of which the whole Court sometimes indulge in the royal game of leap-frog, not even excepting his woolly Majesty himself. According to the authentic statements of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, a somewhat similar practice obtained at the Court of Lilliput, where the courtiers who were to be rewarded by any peculiar mark of favour were accustomed to leap over or crawl under a stick, of which the Emperor sometimes held one end and the minister the other; and whoever performed the best was rewarded with a thread of blue, red, or green silk, which the successful candidates wore about their middle. A process so unmanly, and a reward so contemptible, will hardly gain credence among so rational people as ourselves; but at the same time the relations of respectable travellers ought not to be discountenanced upon slight grounds. His Majesty of China, the lord of the celestial empire, monarch of the earth, brother to the Sun, and uncle to the Moon, (which destroys the mythological relationship between Apollo and Diana,) cousin-german to the Stars, and protector of the firmament, can find no better sport than sitting under an umbrella of yellow silk, surrounded with banners of the dragon, phoenix, tyger, and flying tortoise, to be fanned by a handsome boy while he is sipping sherbet and playing cup and ball. The Great Mogul, according to Voltaire, indulges his courtiers by condescending