"Frankly _canaille_ is that dancing chit Slang and suggestiveness serve her for wit, And impudence for beauty. Yet frigid 'Form' melts at her cockney spell, 'Form,' which votes valsing with the reigning belle An undelightful duty.
"Bounds on the arch-buffoon, with flexile face, With bagman smartness and batrachian grace. Is he not sweet and winning? Mime of the gutter, mimic of the slum, Muse of the haunts unspeakable, else dumb, A satyr gross and grinning?
"LIMPET smiled," he said. "SHAKSPEARE'S boldest wit Leaves LIMPET listless, but each feature lit At that last comic chorus. London is full of LIMPETS; clownings please The well-groom'd mob, though ARISTOPHANES Would miserably bore us.
"Untile the Town entirely? Nay, good friend, That were to affright the timid, and offend The tender and the trustful. Unlifted yet must lie the dusky screen That veils the viler features of the scene, The dread and the disgustful."
"Shadow!" I said, "Civilisation fails, While surfeits Idleness, and Labour pales. For all its spread and glitter, The Titan City lacks its crowning grace And glory, whilst its pleasure is so base, Its bondage is so bitter."
"True!" sighed the Shadow, and a softened smile Seemed to illume the coldness, void of guile, Of those phantasmal features. "When from the City's gloom shall flash to light This truth: The sleek and selfish sybarite Is meanest of God's creatures?"
"Shadow!" I cried. But in the darkness dim Those lineaments did waver and dislimn Like clouds at the sun's waking. Alone I stood; fled was the night, the dream, And o'er the sleeping City's sullen stream Babylon's grey dawn was breaking.
A DIAG-NOSE-IS OF WINE.--The Case of Champagne set before Mr. Alderman and Sheriff DAVIES. Of course, the worthy Alderman, who is a judge of wine, needed only to raise the glass to his nose. He smelt it to see if it was Corke'd. But in answer to the charge of false labelling, it should have been simply pleaded that, at the manufactory, the labels were not simply put on, but Clapt-on. Whether this defence would have gone to mitigate the fine of twenty pounds, is another matter. The Alderman's decision was given, much as the public generally pay for Champagne,--good or bad,--that is, "through the nose."