[ r>70 ] [Jltne, 



F/XMII-IARITIES. NO. 111. 



£. s. d. 



"These three. 



Three thousand confident, in act as many." Shakspeare. 



Let not the reader anticipate a bill of parcels, or an article on the 

 Currency Question, — things which will be herein treated with a philo- 

 sophic indifference bordering on the magnanimous. I should as soon 

 think of sitting down to get the Laureat's " Vision " by heart, or to turn 

 an act of parliament into Anacreontics, as of seeking to obtain the coun- 

 tenance of the King's lieges by apostrophizing that of his Majesty, of the 

 dispantalooned St. George, of his steed or of the dragon, as they appear 

 (or disappear) on certain pieces of gold, of which Mr. Cobbett and his 

 readers only know the exact importance and appropriation. Yet pro- 

 fessing an enthusiastic and enlightened ignorance of all figures (those of 

 rhetoric, the amount of the national debt, and the number of years 

 necessary to the elucidation of a suit in Chancery, excepted) — I never- 

 theless proceed to celebrate the various and wonder-working merits of 

 the celebrated trio above, with an intensity of veneration that would do 

 honour to a loan-contractor. Nor, it must be premised, is a perception 

 of the sublime and beautiful in their composition and arrangement 

 necessarily based on a ready-reckoner. Let us, for a moment, rise 

 superior to the omnipotency of ruled account-books, and tables of multi- 

 plication : or rather let us make ourselves wings of bonds and of bank- 

 notes, flying to the uttermost treasuries of metaphor, and bidding defi- 

 to vulgar-fractions in the very security of our paper pinions. 



If all the languages of this glorified and gossiping world were 

 condensed into one little lexicon, and all its word-makers and philologists 

 jumbled into one mountainous Samuel Johnson, it would still be difficult 

 to point out any three letters so mysteriously imbued with the qualities 

 of good and evil — so pregnant with matter-of-fact and metaphysics, with 

 fortunes and misfortunes, as the golden text above-written. The " milk 

 of human kindness," and the hemlock draught of discord and passion, 

 are by turns distilled into the bosom of society, through the fine but 

 indestructible filaments of these simple initials. What, in art or nature, 

 in history rational or romantic, may be likened unto them ! We may 

 search the map of magic, and the tables of science, — the lines of a 

 philosopher's face, and those of a poet's volume — but we shall scrutinize 

 in vain ; we shall find no indication of a spirit so full of vital breath and 

 meaning — so visible, so potent, and so instantaneously familiar to the 

 business and bosoms of all. The three heads of Cerberus hang abashed 

 and impotent before this more terrible triumvirate : on the other hand, 

 the Graces themselves appear heavy and misshapen, compared with the 

 gentle aspects and fairy-like proportions of these little alphabetical 

 creatures. They are the only genuine " vehi, vidi, vici" of human 

 action and triumph : all others are counterfeit. Had Cassar dated his 

 despatches from Lombard-street, he would have seen and done honour 

 to the distinguishing force of sentiment that characterizes the greatest 

 and most convincing relics of his land and language. As evidence of the 

 eloquent- harmony that naturally belongs to them, it should not be 

 forgotten that they are indebted for their untranslated beauty to the 

 same tongue in which Cicero pleaded and Maro sung. It may on the 



