are fond of historical illustrations. Will they receive one from us? The natives of Siam have all their hair shaved off, except a small round patch between the crown and the forehead, which, being brushed up, stands on end. The reason of this capillary abbreviation does infinite credit to their good sense. They discovered that, in their battles with the more active Cochin Chinese, their ornamental appendages exposed them to continual danger; in short, they were often seized by the tail and carried off. The same disastrous result will follow the juvenile recklessness of Tractarian warfare. The flowing embellishments of antiquity, which they arrange with so much skill, and wear with so glowing a courage, will be the cause of their overthrow and capture. Some fierce antagonist, arrayed in the curt armour of plain good sense, will grapple them in the very exultation of their martial equipment; they will be seized and carried off by the tail. And they are too well read in Homeric combats not to remember the fate that awaited the chieftain, whom a mightier arm whirled into the opposite ranks. Some recent specimens of hardihood surpass in wilful imprudence and folly any thing that could have been expected. A grave secretary of a distinguished society, with bishops in its calendar, saints upon its scal, and poor Mr. Faulkner at its back, has published his belief that angels furnished the designs of our cathedrals and old abbeys, while the common masons seemed to understand their business without either a drawing or a word of instruction.* We presume that St. Paul's was excluded from this supernatural assistance; at all events, if Sir Christopher Wren obtained a ground-plan from any angel, he took care to keep it to himself. Seriously, this absurd passion for antiquity, a passion undiscriminating and superstitious, must be repressed. The sneer in the Scaligerana must not indicate the temper with which old usages are regarded, simply because they are old. "Les Allemans ne se soucient pas quel vin ils boivent, pourvu que ce soit vin, ni quel Latin ils parlent pourvu que ce soit Latin." If this be the case, and B.A.s, with four-and-twenty summers over their heads, will "Go on and and con, pro With and nay, yea Through many points divinely dark, And Waterland assaulting Clarke," why, all we can say is, that a very different Prior from any thing they are accustomed to wish for must be recalled to laugh them out of their absurdities. We were about to remind the clergy and the people of their duty to God and to their brethren in this stormy season of ecclesiastical dispute; but we abandon the intention. The pastoral letter of the Primate of England has already quieted the elements of discord. There is a calm in Exeter; may it be an omen of peace throughout England! Already the candle which Latimer and Ridley lighted seems to burn with a clearer and a steadier flame,-a flame that will rise higher and straighter to heaven, in proportion to the serenity and purity of the atmosphere that encircles it. * The Church Restorers. By Mr. Paley, Secretary to the Camden Society. A GAME OF CHESS WITH NAPOLEON. THE scene of our story is a dinner in Belgrave Square, London; time, ten o'clock at night; date, the twentyfirst day of March, in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and forty-three. Horatius Flaccus could not better have observed the unities. We love to set up our landmarks with precision. The dinner was drawing to a close; for the varied courses and contributions levied upon earth and air, rock and water, had been withdrawn to make way for the costly and sparkling dessert. Ices, sugars, and fruits, in their most extravagant complications, were heaped high upon massive salvers of silver and of crystal. Wines of Burgundy, of Constantia, and of Madeira, had superseded the vintages of Xeres and of Champagne. The heat of the battle was over, the "din of arms" had passed, and the conquerors were at length resting on their laurels, in that beatific state of repose only to be understood by those favoured mortals who have triumphantly passed through the fiery ordeal of a first-rate dinner, without one dyspeptic twinge to mar their budding hopes of a happy digestion. Every loving mother of every dear son present could have said with the Roman matron, "Thanks to the gods, my boy has done his duty!" and well could every fond son respond, "This day, at least, I have practised that first cardinal virtue of dining well!" Be it known to the profane, that this was a banquet of state, a real Lucullus' spread, given by Mr. and Mrs. Goldhall, the eminent Lombard Street bankers, to the Herr von Wolverdenden, the great Hamburg merchant, — the man of millions and of mines, the lord of Mexico and Peru, the potentate of "Change," throughout the chief money-marts of civilised Europe. Wes e say we love to start mathematically. The party assembled comprised just ten individuals. Happy ten! The Amphitryon of the feast, Mr. Goldhall, posted at the lower end of the table, was a common bankerlike-looking sort of a person, and may be dismissed in few words accordingly. He was a dried-up thin VOL. XXXI. NO. CLXXXII. thing, like Shakspeare's "shotten herring;" very short, very spare, and very smart. Mr. Goldhall was not one of those persons of whom it is said they never had a grandfather. Mr. Goldhall's grandsire had been an eminent manufacturer of Havannah cigars from cabbage-leaves, in Pinafore Place, Whitechapel. This piece of family history was probably not known to all the component parts of the present dinner-circle, but strikes us as being, nevertheless, highly interesting. The social system of Great Britain cannot, after all, be so very bad, if such a tree produces such fruits. Could Mr. Goldhall, the grandsire, familiarly known in Whitechapel as "Nobby Sam," have risen this night from his quiet grave for just five minutes, and seen his grandson dining in a palace, with half-a-dozen liveried servants in scarlet behind his chair, why, Mr. Goldhall, our grandfather, would have returned "to earth" the happiest of happy ancestors. And now for the lady of Mr. Goldhall. The head of the table was graced by the portly form of the rich banker's cara sposa; the happy pair not being quite registered on that very select circle of London fashionable society, in which to preside at their dinner-table in person is deemed a vulgar heterodoxy. Mrs. Goldhall was 66 fair and forty," and her full round shoulders were stripped almost to their elbows, in honour of the occasion. In eighteen hundred and forty-three, beauty appears to have been measured and appreciated by the square foot; its fairest blossoms vying with each other as to shewing the most in quantity. Never were seen gowns cut so low, tuckers so invisible. In Mrs. Gold hall, this approach to the costume of the Venus de Medici was, in the eye of the philosopher, pleasant and primitive; in some other women we have seen thus sitting for "the nude," the sensation conveyed has been an anxious desire to cover their charms in crape, as we would mourn for the departed, and also to save such very scraggy forms from lumbago. The lady-patronesses of Almack's should look into this, and constitute a "Jury L of shoulders," with fully constituted powers to " bind and to loose," according to circumstances. This is a parenthesis. We have not yet quite dismissed Mrs. Goldhall's costume. Nid-nodding like a hearse-horse beneath her ostrich-feathers, the form of the fair lady, perhaps, resembled that of Olympian Juno in her majesty of mien; sparkling, too, in a profusion of diamonds, which scattered around their vivid scintillations like brightest sunbeams of morn, playing upon the silvery, frostencrusted, waving willow. This metaphor is getting too much for us. Juno may or may not have worn feathers and diamonds both. Beauty unadorned is described by the poets as a very fine thing. Beauty is none the worse for having 10,000l. worth of jewels enwreathed in her shining tresses. The gardens of the Hesperides sparkle with very tempting fruit, particularly at the present high price of bread. Mrs. Goldhall was just what a banker's wife should be, and not a bit overdone. There was evidently a reserve, in case of a run upon the counter. The lady friends of Mrs. Goldhall were wont to whisper that her constant smile was chiefly assumed to shew off her diamonds. These slanderers were lady friends, men knew better. A really fine woman prefers her own charms to all the brilliants of Golconda: Mrs. Goldhall smiled to shew her teeth. Of the mind and intellect of Mrs. Goldhall, there is no necessity to say much. When ladies rise to a certain position in society, we see no occasion they have for brain at all. Intellect is very well in its way, but by no means essential to Belgrave Square; and we have seen so many walking sticks upon the highways and byways of life, ticketed as "creatures all mind," that really the society of an acknowledged block head, whether male or female, becomes quite "refreshing," if only from its rarity. Mrs. Goldhall had mind enough for her husband, and he for her. In the post of honour-the van of the conflict-on the right hand of our beautiful hostess, was placed Von Wolverdenden, the millionaire for whom the dinner was given. This great man was stopping a few days in London, and was connected in some huge money operations with Goldhall's firm. Wolverdenden was fifty years of age, of good figure, slightly tending to embonpoint, thin white hair, high forehead, and with a pair of small black eyes; so sharp and restless, they appeared as if they could pierce through a granite wall. The Von was gentlemanly and agreeable in conversation, from his great experience of life. Of perfect self-command, and what divines would term “dissimulation," his motto through life appeared to the mob to be, laissez aller, while in reality his brain worked like a never-dying steam-engine. On his white waistcoat, flowing forth like a sea of purity, dwelt in solitary repose some one Continental order of knighthood, bestowed by a certain petty German prince, in return for a loan which no man in Europe could have negotiated but Wolverdenden. Our millionaire, be it noted, was a votary rather to Epicurus than to the Stoic school. He was a gastronome worthy of Ude, Eustache, or Beauvilliers. Von had dined to-day well, and had been much amused with the sayings and doings of the assembled party. On the best possible terms with himself, he was now talking nonsense to his neighbours, pour passer le temps; leading the conversation in that decided tone which a real live lion ought to assume, when he condescends to roar soft for your amusement. While chatting, Wolverdenden was tapping the table carelessly with his white, well-formed hand, as if admiring a huge carbuncle he wore in a ring, one of the finest stones in Europe. Save the star on his breast and the ring on his hand, our guest wore not gem nor jewel. Mrs. Goldhall had caught herself frequently sighing during the last course, as she looked, not on the German, but on his ring. Poets, painters, and musicians, agree that their finest effects are formed by contrast. At the lower end of the table, to the right of Mr. Goldhall, and, consequently, placed in oblique opposition to the Hamburg Plutus, reposed a poet-a real, living poetchristened by his mother (or, as the great American writers would say, his maternal parent") as Diedrich Platter, but rejoicing at present in the name of Stanislaus Poniatowski Skinundgrieff. A poet and a mil lionaire surely present the very climax of contrast; and could that poor Lazarus of a poet be otherwise seated at the mahogany of Dives than at its lower end? up, to the edification of the guests assembled. We have termed Skinundgrieff a lion. A word upon the lion's mane. The hair of our poet waved down the greasy collar of his coat, like the coarse bristles of a dozen wild horses' tails gathered into a wilderness of roughness. We have thought this feature deserving a special paragraph; and the more so, because his best friends must admit his hair to have been singularly striking, and crinatorically redolent of genius. How can a man have talent without he sport much hair? Can a man write, shorn of moustache and imperial, of whisker and of beard? No, the thing is self-demonstrative. We have even been told that, in that A prophet has no honour in his own country. Had the boy Platter remained all his life stitched to a mother's petticoat in Bavaria, he would have manufactured the brooms she was in the habit of selling about the streets of Munich, but would have manipulated little beyond those essential articles of housewifery. Platter had an aspiring soul; he eschewed the osier and the heather; he had gone early in life as far north as Warsaw, in the respectable capacity of valet to a Russian quack doctor; he returned, to bless civilised Europe, the celebrated Polish poet, Stanislaus Poniatowski Skinundgrieff, banished (he said and swore, and we are bound to believe him) by that arch autocrat of all the Russias, the Emperor Nicholas, as the stanchest partisan of the Poles, and the most unquenchable Béranger of Bérangers. Skinundgrieff's outward man was a poor, cadaverous-looking creature, God knows! but he had, doubtless, that within which "passeth show," and the ladies of Paris and London pulled caps for his sonnets. Skinundgrieff spoke both English and French with an accent so sweetly detestable, that, said they, he "must be" a Polish genius of the finest water. The fair sex jump so kindly at conclusions. Skinundgrieff filled up albums and scrap-books with what he termed Sclavonic ballads in their mother tongue, and who could contradict him? He sang songs like the cries of starving wolves in the snow, which did duty for Polish hymns of liberty. He recited verses which the very young ladies loved, because sweetly incomprehensible." At a lord-mayor's ball, given for the benefit of the Polish refugees, it was Skinundgrieff who returned thanks to the company, in the name of " the Sarmatian nation!" In fact, Skinundgrieff was one of the lions of the season, and a very pretty lion, too! He had lately taken to write his Boethry in English, and had brought upon the present occasion, in his pocket, a choice manuscript entitled, The Blasted Bud, which, it had been arranged, he should presently read highly cultivated country termed Poland, the very words "genius" and "hair" are synonymous, both bearing some sort of affinity to the poll or head. After all, our private belief is, that Skinundgrieff was a Mussulman, and had thus suffered his crop to "run to hair," that the Angel of Death might have a sure purchase when he should grasp the knot, for the purpose of carrying its wearer safely across the bridge, to cast him into the arms of the white-limbed houris of Paradise. Only, not to speak it profanely, were we the Angel of Death, we should hesitate, ungloved, at grasping hair so innocent of comb and brush. "And shall the male sex' all our theme engross? Rise, honest Muse, and sing" - the lady who sits by Skinundgrieff— Clarissa Knaggett herself, and no other. Miss Knaggett, having just turned fifty-two, had entered upon the "ethereal," selon les règles, eschewing all that was mundane, and what she termed "unspiritual." A pupil of that high school of composition, introduced into our literature during the last twenty years, she had refined her language and her pen, till both breathed the very odours of purity and sanctity. Several magazines of the day rejoiced in her contributions. Happy magazines! She regularly corresponded with that very great American, Mrs. Sigourney, and in that delicious style of speech which so eminently characterises the first writers on every subject in the world (and out of the world)-need we say we mean Sydney Smith's pets, the Americans?-had assured the friend of her soul in a late letter, that "her spirit wonderfully harmonised and rejoiced in holding commune with that lean thing, Skinundgrieff; for, in his powerfully gifted mind alone on weary earth did she find that sweet gush of thought, that earnest truthfulness of purpose, and that very deep purity of sentiment, fitted so especially to appreciate and delicately recognise the trembling feebleness of one so unhappily 'all nerve,' as she, Clarissa Knaggett. To sum up, other lady-writers may be blue, cobalt or Prussian; Miss Knaggett was purple. Miss Knaggett constantly assured her friends that she was all MIND, except such parts as were all NERVE; still the frame which held together so much mind and nerve must not be altogether passed over. Miss Knag gett was tall and very thin, her features pinched up as if with drinking daily huge draughts of vinegar, with the slightest possible soupçon of squint, which, however, rather relieved than injured the general expression of her countenance. To meet both such eyes at once would have been sadly too much. teeth were beautifully white, as, indeed, they ought to be, considering what they had cost. Her curls were Truefitt's chef-d'œuvre. Her friends said she rouged, but her maid denied it, and we always believe a lady's maid. At any rate, the faint red tint playing around Miss Knaggett's Her nose-tip, and brightening up with such increased effect daily after dinner, must have been purely the rose-pink" of Nature's dressing case. Miss Knaggett's form was worth looking at twice. Her dress was cut Imuch lower than Mrs. Goldhall's, but she had just whispered to Skinundgrieff that "she thanked God she knew better than to dress like that very indecorous person." Certainly Miss Knaggett could not well have dressed indecently. As an osteological specimen, her shoulders were perfect. To an anatomical lecturer, they would have been invaluable, affording the means of illustrating the wonderful powers of nature, by answering satisfactorily that very natural question, "Can such dry bones live ?" We are dwelling too exclusively on Miss Knaggett (although she really possessed 500l. a-year), and must take care our story (for we have a story coming) does not get cold the while. So leave we the lady to continue in that sweet Platonic description of flirtation with Skinundgrieff in which she was now deeply involved; and in which sort of thing, be it noted, we have ever found ladies of the genus "saint" most eager to indulge. We suppose they want to plant below a constant pied à terre, to be enabled to jump farther at each leap heavenward. The remainder of our dinner company need not be minutely depicted. They were the usual mixed lot one meets with upon such occasions, fine, formal, and fussy, grave, and giggling, and grand. Let them, then, enjoy their pine-apple ice, while we do a bit of philosophy. Most true it is that there is philosophy in every thing, ay, even in a rotten nut, if we could but find it out. A problem presents itself, which philosophy alone can solve. On sitting down to dinner, Von Wolverdenden and Skinundgrieff had seen each other for the first time; but, before the fish and soup were removed, had agreed in as pretty a mutual feeling of hate and contempt as was ever engendered in hearts of flesh. Why was this? Esop's fox; "Silver and gold the dirt, sings the poet; "Give me the "The grapes are sour," cries |