Notes of the Month. 219 



jesty hope to live in the hearts of the simply silvered warriors, or does he 

 contemplate raising a sort of tenth legion or Praetorian cohort, glistening all 

 over with an effulgence that must strike terror to the soul of any mutinous 

 traducer of embroidered indescribables ? In fact we don't know that this 

 innovation could not be proved unconstitutional. The youngest of us is old 

 enough to remember a certain monarch once called " a patriot king." But 

 what shall we say of that patriotism that wantonly places the Huggins', 

 Figgins', and Mullins' of thirty-nine regiments of militia, above the Smiths', 

 Jones', and Wiggins' of the remaining ninety regiments ? The thing is 

 monstrous. It 's not in human nature to expect that Mrs. Hopkinson, whose 

 Tom wears embroidered breeches on field days, won't regard herself as 

 much " more genteeler" than Mr. Tims, the helpmate of a man compelled to 

 drag out his existence in obscurity and silver-laced pantaloons. But let us 

 seriously ask, are we never to have done with this childish folly of altering 

 and re-altering the spangles and button-holes of a class of men, who, for 

 some reason or other, think fit to induct their limbs in uniform habiliments ? 

 The reputation of the Charlies of old, and that of the militia of all times, have 

 been on a par. What absurdity then to make the decoration of the cocked 

 hats of the latter a matter of state. Does it signify the fifteenth part of the 

 value of a pin's head, whether all the militia in the United Kingdom were 

 dressed to-morrow in the apparel of Petticoat- lane or in Genoa velvet ? It's 

 enough to make one sick to find the " Gazette" crammed with such insuffer- 

 able silliness the official organ of a British ministry occupied with details of 

 affairs that are not laughable, simply because we don't read them in jest books 

 or children's primers. Frippery fy ing the household troops was one of the 

 most costly hobbies of the defunct Furn, who built that incomprehensible 

 anomaly at the top of St. James's Park ; and if a plain matter of fact persons 

 age, such as William the Fourth has the credit of being, will indulge in a 

 similar (though not expensive) propensity, what in the name of all that'- 

 bewildering may we expect hereafter, when \ve come to be ruled over by one 

 in whom such tendencies may naturally be looked for ? If we do not have the 

 same thing on an extended scale, it will not be for want of example at all 

 events, though for our own part we are confident that the party alluded to 

 will afford just grounds for the application of Napoleon's celebrated remark 

 respecting a female Bourbon " she is the only man in the family." 



A GEM FROM THK ANTIQUE. Since the ratting of a celebrated journalist 

 it is curious to remark his pertinacity in illustrating the position of his new 

 patrons by fables. Sometimes we have one from ^Esop dressed up, and 

 sometimes an original invention, allegorical or otherwise. This is as it should 

 be like to like. We decline giving the Latin, for, since an ingenious friend, 

 Feargus O'Conner, has taken to interlarding his speeches with quota- 

 tions from Ptolemy, Erasmus, and other Lacedemonian authorities, we 

 have eschewed the classics. For the edification of the scribe in question 

 we shall recount a story, related by a veritable historian, in the hopes that it 

 may put him out of conceit with his fabulous worthies. Plutarch, in his 

 " Life of Artaxarxes," in detailing the feuds between that monarch's wife and 

 mother (we forget the ladies' names, as we quote after a twenty years' recol- 

 lection of the biography), says that they were very nearly a match for each 

 other in all manner of villanies. The mother wanted to poison the wife, and 

 the wife the mother; and so satisfied were they of the feeling being mutual, 

 that one would not partake of any dish unless the other also participated 

 therein. At last the old one triumphed. There was a certain deadly liquid 

 in Persia, of so subtile and powerful a nature, that it penetrated all substances 

 but an ass's hoof, and with it she stained one side of a knife, so that when a 

 certain viand was divided therewith the portion touched by the poisoned side 

 was pushed to the wife, whereof she partook and died. Now for the appli- 

 cation. There are two of the Tory potentissimi that by all accounts wish no 

 good to each other. One is an old one, and very worthy of being the mother 

 of all political iniquity. The other, though not a young one, is somewhat 



