THE LOCUST AS A SYMBOL. j>l 



must be here understood to symbolize those lovers of pleasure, 

 deeper dyed than the last referred to, who are immersed in 

 metropolitan delights. 



Of the town-bred cricket, artificial heat and glare make up 

 the favourite atmosphere. Night is his day noise his ex- 

 pression of enjoyment. For ever seeking, and, when found, 

 for ever feasting upon, aliment of the grossest kind, and ap- 

 parently foreign to his nature, yet is he (as a quaint old writer 

 marvels) " wondrous lank and void of superfluity." No less 

 thirsty than voracious, he is always drinking, yet always dry, 

 until his thirst be quenched (as often happens) by the death 

 which overtakes him in the water-pot or milk-pan. 



Is not such a creature a fit image of the votaries of town 

 dissipation ? of those who convert night into day who are 

 for ever craving after unwholesome and unsatisfying pleasures, 

 for ever thirsting after glittering delusive streams, which either, 

 as with Tantalus, forsake his lips, or drown him in their soul- 

 destroying depths? 



Thirdly, and finally, we have a class of pleasure-seekers, 

 compared with which the two last-mentioned are harmless and 

 innocent, in about the same proportion as the grasshopper and 

 the cricket, when compared with the all- destroying locust 

 and of these the locust only is the proper emblem. 



Let us follow rapidly a locust march of destruction ; let us 

 see their troops in terrible array (though as yet in their wing- 

 less youth), pressing forwards- -forwards "running like 



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