SYMBOL OF THE SORDID. 115 



beetle ? Like it, are they not for ever toiling, from rise to set 

 of sun, to amass and roll together their corrupt riches ? And 

 for what purpose ? Not to diffuse, but to bury them, even as 

 the beetle, in the earth of their sordid selfishness. Sometimes, 

 like them, they may amass also for the benefit of offspring 

 offspring, perhaps, with inherited instincts for sordid accumu- 

 lation chips of the old block, who, when they come after, 

 continue to roll on, in the same useless heaps, the same filthy 

 lucre, which in wide and generous distribution would become 

 as manure to fertilize the soil. 



Yerily, shade of Sir Thomas Gresham, thou princely mer- 

 chant ! save but for respect for thee, and for the remnant of 

 noble traders which, with the baser sort, are now wont to as- 

 semble in the modern halls surmounted by thy ancient grass- 

 hopper, we would even tear down that classic, youthful, 

 rural, mirth-loving insect, and set up, in its stead, a gigantic 

 Scarabaeus, which, stripped of its fabulous, but clothed in all 

 its veracious attributes, would be, of all symbols, most appro- 

 priate to surmount a temple of Mammon. 



But if we spare the grasshopper, we would venture to sug- 

 gest, for the edifice in question, another Scarabaean finish, 

 which, however little ornamental, might be of infinite use. 

 On some conspicuous station, grinning grimly at the grass- 

 hopper (the Athenian emblem of perpetual youth), we would 

 elevate a great black efiigy, not of the Scarabceus sacer, but of 

 the " churchyard beetle," in the form of a huge vane, so that, 



