1831.] The Wisdom of Fullij. 425 



Were I a rich man (which thou, great mistress, knowest I ain not), I 

 would build unto thee a temple, which, in honour of thy name, should 

 be called " The Folly !"— A college of Follyists, with myself for their 

 sacerdos, should there assemble weekly; and, by laughing, joking, 

 quirking, quizzing, drinking, dancing, eating, fiddling, roystering, 

 ramping, each should strive to shew himself worthiest of being quoted 

 as thy disciple. High in honoured state should be thy fane, and all 

 around should be arranged the busts of those who, through the world's 

 lugubrious ways, have held thy faith unpolluted and unbroken. But, 

 alas ! I am being carried away again by Folly's tide. I have no riches 

 wherewith to honour her of my heart : " silver and gold have I none." 

 Verily, I have not wherewithal to gild a gingerbread alphabet, or to 

 make glittering a baby's coral. But, with all this emptiness staring me 

 in the face, I despond not. Despond, said I ? Nay, I laugh hugely, 

 giggle exorbitantly, dance unceasingly, and royster endlessly — for all 

 which manifold blessings, to thee, oh ! Folly, am I indebted ! — to thee, 

 to whom, like Erasmus, I dedicate my best lucubrations in endeavouring 

 to extricate thy jolly name, from the fangs of those cold-blooded, matter- 

 of-fact men, who will have it that " folly is folly," and " wisdom is 

 wisdom," without admitting the possibility of so admixing the two, as 

 to arrive at that pleasant concoction, which good fellows recognize under 

 the title of " The Wisdom of Folly !" G. 



NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL. 



Every man who is unhappily forced to make use of his feet, in our 

 Sunday promenades, must look with envy, for such is human nature, at 

 the brilliant chariots, the spruce buggies, and the shining chaVgers of 

 gentlemen, whom in his week-day peregrinations, he sees with pens 

 behind their ears, and their persons behind desks in the dingy holes and 

 corners of the city, which by courtesy are called counting-houses, banks, 

 and public offices. His week-day pity had been raised by thinking what 

 calamity had driven those poor devils to perpetual sallowness, starving, 

 and scribbling ; and he goes out of the den wondering how any living 

 being can manage to live in this tax-paying world upon the salary 

 allotted to this tread-mill existence. But Sunday reverses all his medi- 

 tations, converts his sorrow for them into shame for the seediness of his 

 own wardrobe in such well-dressed society, and finishes his calculation, 

 in the wish to discover the gold mine out of which the men of sallowness 

 and scribbling have dug such capital things. 



We submit a little explanation of the phenomenon to our Heraclitus, 

 and give liim this paragraph to dry his tears withal: — " A clerk in the 

 banking-house of Messrs. Curtis, Robarts, and Co., having absconded 

 with £4,000., Avhich he had collected, the police were sent in all direc- 

 tions. Sir W. Curtis himself, accompanied by Forester, the officer, went 

 to Calais, and set inquiry on foot. He gained no information from which 

 he could draw any conclusion as to the destination or the hiding-place 

 of the clerk. Letters were sent off" to America to stop the notes of the 

 bank. It is believed that the clerk is in London, and a sharp eye is 

 kej)t upon the movements of some of his female companions." 



iiear as l)uggics and bungalows are, £.4000 would, even in these 

 hard times, go a good way to pay for them, and we conceive that a 



.M.JM. New .S>;-»V.t.— Vol,. Xn. No. 70. 2 N 



