Burlesques | Page 9

come
to overthrow him. 'Dog,' I said to the trembling slave, 'tell me where
thy Gold is. THOU hast no use for it. I can spend it in relieving the
Poverty on which thou tramplest; in aiding Science, which thou
knowest not; in uplifting Art, to which thou art blind. Give Gold, and
thou art free.' But he spake not, and I slew him."
"I would not have this doctrine vulgarly promulgated," said the
admirable chaplain, "for its general practice might chance to do harm.
Thou, my son, the Refined, the Gentle, the Loving and Beloved, the
Poet and Sage, urged by what I cannot but think a grievous error, hast
appeared as Avenger. Think what would be the world's condition, were
men without any Yearning after the Ideal to attempt to reorganize
Society, to redistribute Property, to avenge Wrong."
"A rabble of pigmies scaling Heaven," said the noble though misguided
young Prisoner. "Prometheus was a Giant, and he fell."
"Yes, indeed, my brave youth!" the benevolent Dr. Fuzwig exclaimed,
clasping the Prisoner's marble and manacled hand; "and the Tragedy of
To-morrow will teach the World that Homicide is not to be permitted
even to the most amiable Genius, and that the lover of the Ideal and the
Beautiful, as thou art, my son, must respect the Real likewise."
"Look! here is supper!" cried Barnwell gayly. "This is the Real, Doctor;

let us respect it and fall to." He partook of the meal as joyously as if it
had been one of his early festals; but the worthy chaplain could
scarcely eat it for tears.
* This is a gross plagiarism: the above sentiment is expressed much
more eloquently in the ingenious romance of Eugene Aram:--"The
burning desires I have known--the resplendent visions I have
nursed--the sublime aspirings that have lifted me so often from sense
and clay: these tell me, that whether for good or ill, I am the thing of an
immortality and the creature of a God. . . . I have destroyed a man
noxious to the world! with the wealth by which he afflicted society, I
have been the means of blessing many."

CODLINGSBY.
BY D. SHREWSBERRY, ESQ.
I.
"The whole world is bound by one chain. In every city in the globe
there is one quarter that certain travellers know and recognize from its
likeness to its brother district in all other places where are congregated
the habitations of men. In Tehran, or Pekin, or Stamboul, or New York,
or Timbuctoo, or London, there is a certain district where a certain man
is not a stranger. Where the idols are fed with incense by the streams of
Ching-wang-foo; where the minarets soar sparkling above the
cypresses, their reflections quivering in the lucid waters of the Golden
Horn; where the yellow Tiber flows under broken bridges and over
imperial glories; where the huts are squatted by the Niger, under the
palm-trees; where the Northern Babel lies, with its warehouses, and its
bridges, its graceful factory-chimneys, and its clumsy fanes--hidden in
fog and smoke by the dirtiest river in the world--in all the cities of
mankind there is One Home whither men of one family may resort.
Over the entire world spreads a vast brotherhood, suffering, silent,
scattered, sympathizing, WAITING--an immense Free-Masonry. Once
this world-spread band was an Arabian clan--a little nation alone and

outlying amongst the mighty monarchies of ancient time, the
Megatheria of history. The sails of their rare ships might be seen in the
Egyptian waters; the camels of their caravans might thread the sands of
Baalbec, or wind through the date-groves of Damascus; their flag was
raised, not ingloriously, in many wars, against mighty odds; but 'twas a
small people, and on one dark night the Lion of Judah went down
before Vespasian's Eagles, and in flame, and death, and struggle,
Jerusalem agonized and died. . . . Yes, the Jewish city is lost to Jewish
men; but have they not taken the world in exchange?"
Mused thus Godfrey de Bouillon, Marquis of Codlingsby, as he
debouched from Wych Street into the Strand. He had been to take a box
for Armida at Madame Vestris's theatre. That little Armida was folle of
Madame Vestris's theatre; and her little brougham, and her little self,
and her enormous eyes, and her prodigious opera-glass, and her
miraculous bouquet, which cost Lord Codlingsby twenty guineas every
evening at Nathan's in Covent Garden (the children of the gardeners of
Sharon have still no rival for flowers), might be seen, three nights in
the week at least, in the narrow, charming, comfortable little theatre.
Godfrey had the box. He was strolling, listlessly, eastward; and the
above thoughts passed through the young noble's mind as he came in
sight of Holywell Street.
The occupants of the London Ghetto sat at