1 826. ] FamiliarUies—£. s.d. 571 



other gide be argued, that they form a sort of Holy Alliance tn k-tttrs, 

 to the exclusion and debasement of many honorable conjunctions and 

 virtuous words in full ; — that they look like the basis of a system for 

 cutting sliort our venerable and voluminous mode of speech, and making 

 telegraphs of human tongues, — in short, to make us talk and write in 

 initials (heavy days for orators and editors I) to depopulate our fruitful 

 polysyllables and establish a race of interjections, — and all this, to afford 

 free scope for the despotic and despicable vanity of a few legitimate 

 head-letters — super-royal fingerposts to the science and syntax of the 

 alphabet. They would, however, be more properly compared to a King, 

 Lords and Commons, pouring a profusion of splendid images ai>d noble 

 impressions into the emjity pockets of mankind, and having each its 

 period to mark the abbreviation of absolute power. But saj' they arc a 

 monstrous combination of enigmas, — an hieroglyphical epitaph on the 

 tomb of social intercourse and natural simplicity of mind and manners, 

 — the death-warrant of fliith, and of that commerce between heart and 

 heart that interchanges the sj)icy luxuries of a dream-like existence for 

 the refined and durable merchandize of intellect — flowers for fruits — a 

 handful of water for an eyefull of sunshine ; — denounce them as the 

 mystic writing on the wall, of which Time, the interpreter, has already 

 disclosed the frightful and immitigable meaning : — still it may be asked, 

 have they not introduced something into society to fill up the gap in our 

 enjoyments ? Have they not brought us intellectual tea-cups from China, 

 and imaginative shawls from Persia and the Indies ? — kangaroos from 

 Africa, well-bred skeletons from France, and clergymen quite irresistible 

 from the wilds of Caledonia? Are these nothing? Have they not 

 procured for us a poet-laureat, cigars from the Ilavannah, and a dramatic 

 licenser that baptizes our milk-white melodramas in a Red Sea of ink, 

 and sends them back shorn of their ohs ! and alts ! and blushing for 

 their innocent enormities ? Have they done these things — -besides 

 purchasing for us a view of the tombs in Westminster Abbey, and pre- 

 vailing on very moderate-minded people to sing and dance to us at the 

 rate of a fc\v thousands of pounds for a season — and is there no faith in 

 the necromancies of £. .v. d. 9 Yet these are but a small portion of the 

 blessings conferred on us by this triangular anomaly — this joint-stock 

 company of markets and miracles— these weird sisters, the ominous 

 three, whose spells are on the M'hirlwind, on the thunder, and the 

 strength of the human heart. They entertain us with "prophetic 

 greeting" in the desert places of society; and suddenly irradiate the 

 stern, repulsive scenery of life with a simple " I promise to pay." They 

 let loose, to blow where it listcth, the wind of independence — that " lord 

 of the lion-heart." They stand at once as the motto and the index to 

 the world's volume ; which, though it contains but few transcripts from 



" The leaves of the Spring's sweetest book, the rose," 

 or any of those of which nature itself is at once the author and publisher, 

 may boast after all its sweetnesses and its ornaments : but even these 

 acknowledge the instrumentality of £. s. d. Nor is that the only book to 

 whose alternate common-place and mystification they supply an ex- 

 planatory note. Perhaps some of our politicians and novelists would find 

 them not unserviceable in depicting, far better than any set of words 

 could do it, their several ideas of pathos and patriotism. \Miat says the 

 " Author of Waverley ? ' It would look well and honest, if men who 

 enter into a contract to write a hundred pages for thrice as many pounds, 



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