THE LOCUST AS A SYMBOL. 21 



must be here understood to symbolize those lovers of plea- 

 sure, deeper dyed than the last referred to, who are immersed 

 in metropolitan delights. 



Of the town-bred cricket, artificial heat and glare make up 

 the favourite atmosphere. Night is his day noise his ex- 

 pression of enjoyment. For ever seeking, and, when found, 

 for ever feasting upon, aliment of the grossest kind, and 

 apparently foreign to his nature, yet is he (as a quaint old 

 writer marvels) " wondrous lank and void of superfluity." 

 No less thirsty than voracious, he is always drinking, yet 

 always dry, until his thirst be quenched (as often happens) by 

 the death which overtakes him in the water-pot or milk-pan. 



Is not such a creature a fit image of the votaries of town 

 dissipation? of those who convert night into day who are 

 for ever craving after unwholesome and unsatisfying pleasures, 

 for ever thirsting after glittering delusive streams, which 

 either, as with Tantalus, forsake his lips, or drown him in 

 their soul-destroying depths ? 



Thirdly, and finally, we have a class of pleasure-seekers, 

 compared with which the two last-mentioned are harmless 

 and innocent, in about the same proportion as the grasshopper 

 and the cricket, when compared with the all-destroying locust 

 and of these the locust only is the proper emblem. 



Let us follow rapidly a locust march of destruction ; let us 

 see their troops in terrible array (though as yet in their wing- 

 less youth), pressing forwards forwards " running like 



VOL. III. 3. 



