PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.

Introductory.

RT thou beautiful, O my daughter, as the

ᎪᎡᎢ

budding rose of April?

Are all thy motions music, and is poetry throned

in thine eye?

Then hearken unto me; and I will make the bud

a fair flower,

I will plant it upon the bank of Elegance, and water it with the water of Cologne;

And in the season it shall " come out," yea bloom,

the pride of the parterre;

Ladies shall marvel at its beauty, and a Lord shall

pluck it at the last.

Of Propriety.

Study first Propriety: for she is indeed the Pole

star

Which shall guide the artless maiden through the

mazes of Vanity Fair;

Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society;

The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros.

Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being

naked;

Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice :

And when she is drest, behold! she knoweth not

herself again.

I walked in the Forest; and above me stood the

Yew,

Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in im

penetrable shade;

Then I pass'd into the citizen's garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape,

(The giant's locks had been shorn by the Dalilahshears of Decorum ;)

And I said, "Surely nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!"

I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over

the blue sky,

And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo!

I blessed him as he rose;

Foolish! for far better is the trained boudoir

bulfinch,

Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and me

chanically draweth up water:

And the reinless steed of the desert, though his

neck be clothed with thunder,

Must yield to him that danceth and 'moveth in the

circles' at Astley's.

For verily, O my daughter, the world is a masque

rade,

And God made thee one thing, that thou mightest

make thyself another:

A maiden's heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards,

And it needed that its motions be checked by the

silvered cork of Propriety:

He that can afford the price, his be the precious

treasure,

Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble

if it tasteth of the cork.

Of Friendship.

Choose judiciously thy friends; for to discard them

is undesirable,

Yet it is better to drop thy friends, O my daugh

ter, than to drop thy 'H's'.

Dost thou know a wise woman? yea, wiser than the children of light?

Hath she a position? and a title? and are her parties in the Morning Post?

If thou dost, cleave unto her, and give up unto her thy body and mind;

Think with her ideas, and distribute thy smiles at her bidding:

So shalt thou become like unto her; and thy

manners shall be "formed,"

And thy name shall be a Sesame, at which the doors of the great shall fly open:

Thou shalt know every Peer, his arms, and the

date of his creation,

His pedigree and their intermarriages, and cousins

to the sixth remove: