men-I love the universal gaiety, from the peer who smiles and sighs that he is no longer an Eton boy, to the country-girl who marvels that such little gentlemen have cocked hats and real swords. Give me a Montem with all its tom-foolery-I had almost said before a coronation-and even without the aids of a Perigord-pie and a bottle of claret at the Windmill."

"If there were some association," replied Frazer, "which could, in the slightest degree, connect the pageant with the objects of a royal school of learning-(I had expected at least to have heard a Latin oration)—I would not so much reprehend it; but for a procession in pumps, along a dusty road, to end in the College Exercise of a King's Scholar waving a banner, is too absurd for any fancy to dress up a vindication.”

"A vindication of a ceremony that makes twenty-thousand people happy!" exclaimed Gerard: "the very scene before the window furnishes a ready answer to every objector. Here is folly enough in conscience; but it is the folly of an age when folly sits easily and gracefully upon us. Did you ever see an installation? The mantles are not much finer than little Sutton's, and the plumes not much more exalted than lofty Platt's; and then, for a procession, we beat them hollow. Look at the eight beautiful boys that attend the Captaintheir ages and figures are pretty equal, and their eyes beam with a joy which sparkles like their spangles-is not this something more natural and

pleasing than a train of decrepit Dukes or hobbling. Marquises, where the flowing mantle but ill con ceals the shrunk calf, and the ostrich-feathers nod over sunken eyes and wrinkled cheeks?"

"I think," quoth William Payne, as they moved to the Windmill garden-(he had, till that moment, been a listener to the rival opinions)-"I think Montem may be defended upon very reasonable grounds; it encourages the arts and manufactures of the country, improves the revenue, and is altogether consonant with the soundest principles of political economy."

"A fig for your political economy!" exclaimed Gerard, as they entered the garden,-"here's a scene! What but Montem could have brought together so many divine shapes, such beaming eyes? How gracefully they lounge through the shadowy walks! how they stud the lawn with hues more delicate than the lilacs: how they beat time with their eloquent fingers to Love among the roses!' how they smile upon the slim lads, who, after the sixth glass, come amongst them to make conquests! It is a right English scene; there is the staymaker's wife from Thames Street elbowing a Cavendish, and a gentleman-commoner of Cambridge playing the agreeable to the farmer's pretty daughter from Cippenham Green. Frazer, Frazer, abandon your heresy!"

"It is indeed an English scene," said Paterson. "Beneath that elm stands one of our great Etonians; he is evidently pleased. There is a smile

of pensive joy playing about his lips, and his eyes are lighted up with a fond recollection of happiness that is past away. I dare be sworn that George Canning, the first of living orators, the statesman whose genius is piercing its way through the dark clouds of Europe's destiny, is even now looking back with more real pleasure to the triumphs of Gregory Griffin, than to the honours of the most successful policy; and is feeling, with a true philosophy, that the swords and plumes of Montem are worth as much-perhaps much more-than the ribbons and stars of a riper age-' a little louder, but as empty quite.'

"And there," said Holyoake, "stands his fearless and all-knowing rival ;-and he, too, is pleased. I see no frown gathering like a whirlwind about the brows of Henry Brougham. He is chatting with a happy little hero of buckles and silk-stockings, as delighted himself as if he were perfectly unconscious of briefs and Brookes's. Montem for ever, say I, if it were only that it can make two such men forget the cares and passions of their ordinary life, even for a few hours."

"Come," said Gerard, "politicians are everyday persons on such occasions as these ;-I can see these foremost men of all the world' for half-acrown, any night between this and the prorogation. Look yonder-there is a mother kissing her boy who is just arrived to the dignity of the fifth form, and the privilege of a Corporal's coat-while his lovely sister gazes on him with a speechless admi

ration, and wishes that 'heaven had made her such a man.' That trio alone redeems Montem from all its folly."

"I can behold such a piece of the pathetic any day," said Frazer, "at an 'establishment' at Islington, or a 'seminary' at Camden Town."

"I will not attempt to reason with Frazer," said Gerard, "about the pleasures of Montem ;-but to an Etonian it is enough that it brings pure and ennobling recollections-calls up associations of hope and happiness-and makes even the wise feel that there is something better than wisdom, and the great that there is something nobler than greatness. And then the faces that come about us at such a time, with their tales of old friendships or generous rivalries. I have seen to-day fifty fellows of whom I remember only the nicknames; -they are now degenerated into schemimg M.P.'s, or clever lawyers, or portly doctors;-but at Montem they leave the plodding world of reality for one day, and regain the dignities of sixth-form Etonians."

ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE.

THE changes that are constantly going forward in the external aspects of society require the lapse of a generation or two to make a due impression upon our senses and our reason. One form of life so imperceptibly slides into another, that we observe no striking contrasts till we look back from our age to our youth, or study, with a purpose of comparison, the pictures which the novelists or dramatists of one period have painted, and then turn to the same occasional records of another period, by the same class of true historians. Thus we see distinctly that Defoe lived in a condition of society very different from that in which Fielding lived, and that Smollett was describing scenes and characters which could never have offered themselves to the observation of Dickens. It is the same with the painters. Hogarth's men and women are essentially unlike those of Gillray, and Gillray's notabilities never to be confounded with those of Doyle or Leech. As a boy, I was familiar with Hogarth. But as pictures of a life that was patent to me, how could I comprehend the cassocked parson on his lean horse, and his daughter alighted from the York Waggon?* A fine lady beating *Harlot's Progress, plate 1.