LETTER X.

FROM MISS BIDDY FUDGE TO MISS DOROTHY

WELL, it isn't the King, after all, my dear creature!
But don't
you go laugh, now—there's nothing to
quiz in't-

For grandeur of air and for grimness of feature,
He might be a King, DOLL, though, hang him,

he isn't.

At first, I felt hurt, for I wish'd it, I own,

If for no other cause but to vex Miss MALONE,—
(The great heiress, you know, of Shandangan, who's
here,

Showing off with such airs, and a real Cashmere*,
While mine's but a paltry, old rabbit-skin, dear!)
But Pa says, on deeply consid'ring the thing,
"I am just as well pleas'd it should not be the King;

* See Lady Morgan's "France" for the anecdote, told her by Madame de Genlis, of the young gentleman whose love was cured by finding that his mistress wore a shawl “ peau de lapin."

"As I think for my BIDDY, so gentille and jolie, "Whose charms may their price in an honest way

fetch,

"That a Brandenburgh"-(what is a Brandenburgh, DOLLY?)—

"Would be, after all, no such very great catch. "If the R-G— -T indeed—” added he, looking sly(You remember that comical squint of his eye) But I stopp'd him with "La, Pa, how can you say so, "When the R-G-T loves none but old women, you know!"

Which is fact, my dear DOLLY-we, girls of eighteen,
And so slim-Lord, he'd think us not fit to be seen;
And would like us much better as old-ay, as old
As that Countess of DESMOND, of whom I've been
told

That she liv'd to much more than a hundred and ten,
And was kill'd by a fall from a cherry-tree then!
What a frisky old girl! but-to come to my lover,
Who, though not a King, is a hero I'll swear,
You shall hear all that's happen'd, just briefly run

over,

Since that happy night, when we whisk'd through the air!

Let me see -'twas on Saturday — yes, DOLLY,

yes

From that evening I date the first dawn of

my bliss ;

When we both rattled off in that dear little carriage, Whose journey, Bов says, is so like Love and

Marriage,

66 Beginning gay, desperate, dashing, down-hilly,
"And ending as dull as a six-inside Dilly!"*
Well, scarcely a wink did I sleep the night through;
And, next day, having scribbled my letter to you,
With a heart full of hope this sweet fellow to
meet,

I set out with Papa, to see LOUIS DIX-HUIT
Make his bow to some half-dozen women and boys,
Who get up a small concert of shrill Vive le Rois-
And how vastly genteeler, my dear, even this is,
Than vulgar Pall-Mall's oratorio of hisses!
The gardens seem'd full-so, of course, we walk'd
o'er 'em,

'Mong orange-trees, clipp'd into town-bred decorum, And daphnes, and vases, and many a statue

There staring, with not ev'n a stitch on them, at you!

*The cars, on the return, are dragged up slowly by a chain.

The ponds, too, we view'd-stood awhile on the brink

To contemplate the play of those pretty gold fishes

"Live bullion," says merciless BOB, "which, I think,.

66

Would, if coin'd, with a little mint sauce, be delicious!"*

* Mr. Bob need not be ashamed of his cookery jokes, when he is kept in countenance hy such men as Cicero, St. Augustine, and that jovial bishop, Venantius Fortunatus. The pun of the great orator upon the "jus Verrinum," which he calls bad hogbroth, from a play upon both the words, is well known; and the Saint's puns upon the conversion of Lot's wife into salt are equally ingenious : - "In salem conversa hominibus fidelibus quoddam præstitit condimentum, quo sapiant aliquid, unde illud caveatur exemplum." De Civitat. Dei, lib. xvi. cap. 30.

-The jokes of the pious favourite of Queen Radagunda, the convivial Bishop Venantius, may be found among his poems, in some lines against a cook who had robbed him. The following is similar to Cicero's pun:

Plus juscella Coci quam mea jura valent.

See his poems, Corpus Poetar. Latin. tom. ii. p. 1732.— Of the same kind was Montmaur's joke, when a dish was spilt over him—“ summum jus, summa injuria ;" and the same celebrated parasite, in ordering a sole to be placed before him, said,

Eligi cui dicas, tu mihi sola places.

The reader may likewise see, among a good deal of kitchen erudition, the learned Lipsius's jokes on cutting up a capon in his Saturnal. Sermon. lib. ii. cap. 2.

But what, DOLLY, what, is the gay orange-grove, Or gold fishes, to her that's in search of her love? In vain did I wildly explore every chair Where a thing like a man was— no lover sate there! In vain my fond eyes did I eagerly cast

At the whiskers, mustachios, and wigs that went

past,

To obtain, if I could, but a glance at that curl,
A glimpse of those whiskers, as sacred, my girl,
As the lock that, Pa says*, is to Mussulmen giv❜n,
For the angel to hold by that "lugs them to heaven!"
Alas, there went by me full many a quiz,

And mustachios in plenty, but nothing like his ! Disappointed, I found myself sighing out "well-aday,"

Thought of the words of T-M M-RE's Irish Melody,

*For this scrap of knowledge "Pa" was, I suspect, indebted to a note upon Volney's Ruins; a book which usually forms part of a Jacobin's library, and with which Mr. Fudge must have been well acquainted at the time when he wrote his "Down with Kings," &c. The note in Volney is as follows: -"It is by this tuft of hair (on the crown of the head), worn by the majority of Mussulmans, that the Angel of the Tomb is to take the elect and carry them to Paradise."