686 



THE SWEET BLADE-HONK 



garrets in the Strand, in the Fauxbourgs of Paris, in any obscure 

 chink of Madrid or Lisbon, in the dungeons of Austria, or near the 

 bear's den of St. Petersburg. No order, hitherto invented, can vie 

 \vith the simple greatness, the fine significance of our order of " The 

 Sweet Blade-bone." It is at once a reward and lesson of temperance 

 there is in it a perpetual homily, a continual exhortation. NOAV, 

 Edward's Garter hath at times been affixed to the wrong member ; 

 instead of being worn on the left leg, between the knee and calf, it 

 might in many instances have served a better turn, had it been 

 lengthened, and fixed about the neck. The Order of St. Patrick has, 

 more than once, belied the imputed acts of the saint, being worn by 

 venomous animals: though the Order of Fools, instituted " in the 

 year 1380, by Adolphus, Duke of Cleves, on the feast of St. Hum- 

 bert, and consisting of thirty-five knights companions, chosen from 

 among the nobility," may possibly have been awarded with a shrewd 

 eye to the merits of the selected. The Golden Fleece may also 

 have justly fallen to the lot of chivalric flayers the Spur to gentry 

 willing to post on any errand and on any road. But what are all 

 these orders, and the hundred others of the Swan, the Elephant, the 

 Star, the St. Michael, the Broom Flower, the Death's Head, the Dog 

 and Cock, the Ermine in Naples all the evanescent modes of distin- 

 guishing, nine times out of ten, knaves or fools, panders or dupes 

 what is the brief existence of all of these compared to the everlasting 

 principle typified by Andrew Marvell's " sweet blade-bone " ? The 

 Fleece is shrunk, and has the moth of time devouring its splendour 

 the Spur is broken, and cankered with rust the Swan has moulted 

 every feather the Elephant is but a thing of another day (the mere 

 mammoth of heraldry) the Star has shot from its sphere the 

 Broom Flower is withered all these have passed or are rapidly 

 passing away ; but " the sweet blade-bone " is yet among us, as 

 " sweet" as when Andrew, to the confusion of the money-bearing 

 treasurer, first christened it. 



Let us, then, consider whether we cannot pick out a brave chapter 

 of this our new order ; which shall have one advantage not possessed 

 by all its number shall be unlimited, nor shall there be any fees 

 paid by any new-made knight soever. The chapter shall also com- 

 prise the dead as well as the living. As for the costume, that may 

 be an old or a new cloak a rusty beaver or a glossy one, as suits the 

 means or disposition of the wearer. We eschew hose of pearl- 

 coloured silk, roses of silver lace, surcoats, mantles of sky-coloured 

 velvet; the only badge required by our knights shall be "a sweet 

 blade-bone." For the Prelate of the Order, we will take rare old 

 Latimer, with his frieze-coat and his Bible, slung by a leathern strap 

 to his button-hole ; for the Chancellor, Richard Hooker, or Jeremy 

 Taylor ; for the Register of the Blade-Bone, John Milton ; for the 

 Blade-Bone, Andrew Marvell himself; for the Black Rod, the 

 wonderful Defoe ; for Knights Companions, Algernon Sydney, John 

 Locke, Benjamin Franklin, John Hampden, John Evelyn, Miguel 

 Cervantes, Robert Burns, and twenty others that will start up in the 

 memory of the reader, any six of whom are enough to make the 

 Knights of the Fleece, the Elephant, or the Star, " shine like so 



