BUTTERFLY MEMOIRS. 303 



helped so often to illuminate. In return for having thus 

 assisted to chronicle our own brightest days, we are about to 

 give a sketch of Butterflies in general and of their prevailing 

 characteristics, with notices of such incidents as happen nearly 

 alike to all. We thought once, indeed, of selecting some 

 certain individual from this family of distinguished flatterers, 

 with the view of making it the subject of a biographical notice. 

 For instance, " The Life, Court, and Times of a Purple Em- 

 peror," or "The Memoirs and Correspondence of a Painted 

 Lady/' would have sounded well enough ; but where in the 

 life of a Butterfly should we have found the highly seasoned 

 requisites for pleasing public taste, those buried and resus- 

 citated scandals, those unblushing falsehoods, covered or dis- 

 guised by rouge and rank, which make up the greater portion 

 of royal and noble biography. But setting these aside, what 

 other materials, it may be inquired, could be supplied to the 

 manufacturer of Memoirs by the life of an idle Butterfly? 

 Abundance, we reply; an ample sufficiency of mingled yarn 

 for the weaving of a tissue quite as durable (to say nothing of 

 beauty) as those which are spun daily out of lives as trifling, 

 and much more uneventful. Sunshine and shade, love and 

 war, accidents by flood and field, hair-breadth escapes from 

 flying fire-eyed dragons, these, and numberless vicissitudes 

 varied as their many-coloured pinions, mark, and to them 

 may seemingly extend to years, the span of days or weeks 

 allotted to our glorious flutter ers. 



