228 
THE PLOlUST. 
and Emperors were stiff and stark; the very Giant of Battles lay lifeless 
by the dead Lion of Combats amid broken Standards, which never more 
should unfurl their bright colours to the wind; and lo! here they all 
were, renascent, in their best health and in their best uniforms. I 
stood astonied, like the hero of that thrilling story, “ The Woman in 
White,” when, at the grave of Lady Clyde, he saw, standing close to 
him, her ladyship’s living self. 
Overwhelmed for a time by the mere vastness of the great enjoyment 
before me, like some famished mouse unexpectedly finding himself in 
the middle of a cheesemonger’s shop, I gazed, with my eyes and mouth 
as open as a countryman’s at a coronation, upon that charming com¬ 
pany, until at length their individual identity revealed itself to my glad 
perception, and one after another the dear friends, for whom I had 
mourned as lost, smiled a pleasant greeting upon me. Although many 
of them were evidently in indifferent health, and some of them were as 
altered in their appearance as ladies and gentlemen who land at Folk- 
stone, after two hours’ misery among the “ white bears,” yet never did 
I feel so earnestly happy in welcoming each familiar face; never did I 
know so thoroughly how absence, according to the adage, educes a new 
fondness from the heart. Wisely has it been said by a Warwickshire 
dramatist— 
“ If all the year were playing holidays, 
To work would be as easy as to play; 
But when they seldom come, they wished for come 
and in all our enjoyments a little previous deprivation or abstinence is sure 
to cause a keener zest. Do you not remember that grand supper at the end 
of “ the half,” for which we saved our sixpences, and of which for days 
before its actual mastication we spoke yearningly with bated breath ? 
Do you not remember, how, when Mr. Robinson, the butler (he was of 
“ robust habit,” as we gardeners say, and was irreverently known to 
us boys by the appellation of “ Old Swill-tub”), had taken away our 
candle, another light, concealed never mind how, was produced from 
under the cubicle of Jones, minimus—how a rabbit-pie, surrounded 
with cheese-cakes, was brought out of the portmanteau of “ cock-eye 
Dobson,” jam and lobsters from the hat-box of “ sneaky Smith,” with 
various viands, and fluids (I grieve to say), from other occult localities 
and deep mysterious bins ? And, more pertinently to my present 
theme, do you not recall, how, to ensure a full fruition of our banquet, 
we put our appetites into a due restraint and training, eating sparingly 
throughout the day, and with an affected magnanimity bestowing our 
cheese at supper upon the tiny non-subscribers to our approaching 
feast? Well, thus jejune and fasting, went I to the great feast of 
Roses; glared upon them like ravenous Richard, when— 
“ Round he cast his greedy eyes 
Upon the tartlets and the pies 
and finally settled down to my meal, like a doctor’s horse to the Squire’s 
old beans. But what have I done, unhappy miscreant that I am? I 
have dared to draw a vile analogy between the Queen of Flowers and a 
cheesecake: I have assimilated Her Majesty to a dead lobster;—I 
banish myself from metaphor for life! 
