372 Familiarities — £. s. d. [June, 



could incorporate these three letters with the title ; they would help the 

 reader over a great many unprovoked episodes and expensive digressions, 

 and explain to him besides why the Jinis could not appear upon the 

 second page- How would tliey show at the end of a man's name ! An 

 F.L.S. comes near to them — an LL.D. nearer; but what charm of 

 letters can compai-e with the inward dignity and outward fascination of 

 the following — A'^. M. Rothschild, Esq., L.S.D. f There is a simple 

 grandeur in this that approaches nearer to the sublime than any title 

 (short of Right Reverend) that has hitherto been propagated — some- 

 thing that thrills us to the very purse-strings. M.P., K.G. and all other 

 consonantal honours — even G.R. themselves hide their diminished heads 

 before these rulers of all the countries and capitals of the earth, from 

 Alpha to Omega, from Arcady to Zealand. 



To that facetious class of persons who occasionally divulge thee«nMtof 

 " single blessedness " by advertising their inclinations as " not averse to 

 the holy state," and, with a truly Adamite rusticity, announce the 

 possession of a temporal and spiritual Elysium, in their own proper 

 persons, that requires only the hand of an Eve to assist its cultivation, 

 these letters would be found of singular utility. They would prevent all 

 that prolixity of metaphor, about "congeniality of minds" and "domestic 

 beatitude," that renders our advertising columns more valuable than 

 those of the Greeks and Romans. Instead of an A B, or Y Z (a thing, 

 as punsters would say, scarcely to be expected in such a quarter), the 

 delicate point and expression of "letters addressed to £. s. d." &c. could 

 not fail of provoking a host of epistles, the value of which, viewing 

 them as waste-paper only, would purchase for their possessor an actress 

 or a dowager. People who visit church or chapel to " form connections 

 in life " might be startled at hearing them delivered as a text ; but it is 

 to be feared (not to speak it either uncharitably or profanely) that the 

 initials I am treating of constitute too often their amplest notions of a 

 tria in uno. I have heard of an instance where they composed the sole 

 contents of an eloquent letter of condolence, addressed to a widow "well 

 provided for." In literature their effect must be instantaneous. As initials 

 are now so fashionable, " Poems by L.S.D." would leave nothing of the 

 rainbow of L.E.L.'s reputation, but a " green and yellow melancholy" 



Although it is clear, therefore, that man may have more estimable 

 companions in life than £. s. d., yet it is also clear that, without their 

 co-operation, he is not likely to have any. With them, as with the three 

 men of old, he may walk unslnged through a burning fiery furnace : with- 

 out them — but my pen, as we modems phrase it, refuses to write ; and, 

 like Sterne, I am " forced to go on with another part of the picture." 

 They are with us (or should be) in all seasons. At once the tree of 

 knowledge and of life, we find under their shadow the hope and misery 

 of things human and inhuman. If we are born to a slip as an inheritance, 

 or obtain one by chance or ambition, it will grow, if cultured, in the 

 very hand — a switch to brush the flies off in youth, a gold-headed cane 

 in maturity, and a crutch to the lameness of age. We notch our days 

 in it, and die when it gives way. It is, however, too often employed, 

 not so much as a stay and succour to its possessor, as to goad the weary 

 laden, and lacerate the afflicted. It is sometimes used, not only to strike 

 down the sacred altars of nature, but as a barrier to noble emulation ; 

 not merely to brush the nettles from the path of pride and arrogance^ 

 but to turn aside the woodbine and honeysuckle from the cottage-window 



