Amidst the solemn and subdued splendour of the sanctuary, upon which Bekfudi most prided himself, he hung up an enormous mirror which brought all the varied colours of the neighbouring galleries, and all the garishness of day, into the heart of its former deep and impressive gloom; and in the hall which the spice-merchant had dedicated to the worthies of his country, he stuck up the statue of one of the rebellious princes who had presumed to contend against the justice of the great Haroun al Raschid. But the little Jew was yet a most deserving factor. All Samarah again flocked to the mosque with the great minaret; and all Samarah came this time with money in their vests, to purchase some relic of the magnificent Bekfudi. Every one was pleased, except the unhappy builder of the palace, for every one was agreeably relieved of his sequins at his own free-will. He alone writhed under the mortifications of his pride, and the outrages upon his taste. He stalked one day into the palace of his splendour, now metamorphosed into one large bazaar, and with a yell of fury he overthrew the statue of the foe of the caliph, and shivered into a thousand pieces the mirror which deformed the sanctuary. He then coolly paid the price which the Jew demanded, and retired to a humble dwelling without a minaret, purposing to pass the remainder of his days in composing treatises on temperance and humilitybut ending in building another tower.

THE ETON MONTEM.

AMONGST the' Memorable Things Lost' is the Eton Montem. Railroads destroyed it: for they made it vulgar. Whitechapel turned out for the last Montem, as it turns out for the Lord Mayor's show-and the aristocratic school would no longer indulge the mob with a cheap holiday. Let me remember Montem, as I last saw it in 1820.

London gave up its Poet of Mayor's Day a century ago. Eton retained its Montem Poet till he went the way of other immortals. The Poet was a more prominent personage in the ceremony of Montem than the Head-master of the college. But the reader must permit me to throw my remembrances into a dialogue between three or four friends, who came to look at the triennial show,-to laugh at it, or to defend it :—

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Who is that buffoon that travesties the travesty?' inquired Frazer. Who is that old cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and grimaces in all the glory of plush and printed calico?'

That, my most noble cynic,' said Gerard, 'is a prodigious personage. Shall birthdays and coronations be recorded. in immortal odes, and Montem not have its minstrel? He, sir, is Herbertus Stockhore; who first called upon his muse in the good old days of Paul Whitehead,-run a race with Pye through all the sublimities of lyres and fires, and is now hobbling to his grave, after having sung fourteen Montems, the only existing example of a legitimate laureate. Ask Paterson about him;-he is writing a quarto on his life and genius.'

He ascended his heaven of invention,' said Paterson, 'before the vulgar arts of reading and writing, which are banishing all poetry from the world, could clip his wings.

He was an adventurous soldier in his boyhood; but, having addicted himself to matrimony and the muses, settled as a bricklayer's labourer at Windsor. His meditations on the house-tops soon grew into form and substance; and, about the year 1780, he aspired, with all the impudence of Shadwell, and a little of the pride of Petrarch, to the laurelcrown of Eton. From that day he has worn his honours on his "Cibberian forehead" without a rival.'

And what is his style of composition?' said Frazer.

Vastly naïve and original;-though the character of the age is sometimes impressed upon his productions. For the first three odes, ere the school of Pope was extinct, he was a compiler of regular couplets, such as

"Ye dames of honour and lords of high renown,

Who come to visit us at Eton town."

During the next nine years, when the remembrance of Collins and Gray was working a glorious change in the popular mind, he ascended to Pindarics, and closed his lyrics with some such pious invocation as this :

"And now we'll sing

During the first

God save the King,

And send him long to reign,
That he may come

To have some fun

At Montem once again."

twelve years of the present century the influence of the Lake School was visible in his productions. In my great work I shall give an elaborate dissertation on his imitations of the high priests of that worship; but I must now content myself with a single illustration

"There's Ensign Rennell, tall and proud,

Doth stand upon the hill,

And waves the flag to all the crowd,

Who much admire his skill.

And here I sit upon my ass,

Who lops his shaggy ears;

Mild thing! he lets the gentry pass,

Nor heeds the carriages and peers,"

He was once infected (but it was a venial sin) by the heresies of the Cockney school; and was betrayed, by the contagion of evil example, into the following conceits :

"Behold Admiral Keate of the terrestrial crew,

Who teaches Greek, Latin, and likewise Hebrew ;
He has taught Captain Dampier, the first in the race,
Swirling his hat with a feathery grace,

Cookson the Marshal, and Willoughby, of size,

Making minor Sergeant-Majors in looking-glass eyes."

But he at length returned to his own pure and original style; and, like the dying swan, he sings the sweeter as he is approaching the land where the voice of his minstrelsy shall no more be heard. There is a calm melancholy in the close of his present Ode which is very pathetic, and almost Shaksperean:

"Farewell you gay and happy throng!

Farewell my Muse! farewell my song!
Farewell Salthill! farewell brave Captain !"

Yet, may it be long before he goes hence and is no more seen! May he limp, like his rhymes, for at least a dozen years; for National Schools have utterly annihilated our hopes of a successor!'

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Paterson finished his apostrophe at a lucky juncture; for the band struck up, and the procession began to move. We have reached the foot of the mount at Salthill, very respectable barrow, which never dreamt, in its Druidical age, of the interest which it now excites, and the honours which now await it. Its sides are clothed with mechanics in their holiday clothes, and happy dairy-maids in their Sunday gear;-at its base sit Peeresses in their barouches, and Earls in all the honours of four-in-hand. The flag is waved; the scarlet coats and the crimson plumes of the Etonians float amongst us- the boys carry it away, Hercules and his load too,'-and the whole earth seems made for the enjoyment of one universal holiday.

And is this all?' said Frazer, in a tone of querulous

contempt, which became almost positively mournful in his Doric dialect;—is this all that these thousands of silken ladies and silly clowns are come to gaze upon? Out upon such tomfoolery, whose origin is as obscure as its end is pointless.'

Paterson at once took up the cudgels.-' And I say, out upon your eternal hunting for causes and reasons. I love the no-meaning of Montem. I love to be asked for “ Salt," by a pretty boy in silk stockings and satin doublet, though the custom has been called "something between begging and robbing." I love the apologetical "Mos pro Lege," which defies the police and the Mendicity Society. I love the absurdity of a Captain taking precedence of a Marshal; and a Marshal bearing a gilt bâton, at an angle of forty-five degrees from his right hip; and an Ensign flourishing a flag with the grace of a tight-rope dancer; and Sergeants paged by fair-skinned Indians and beardless Turks; and Corporals in sashes and gorgets, guarded by innocent Polemen in blue jackets and white trousers. I love the mixture of real and mock dignity-the Provost, in his cassock, clearing the way for the Duchess of Leinster to see the Ensign make his bow; or the Head Master gravely dispensing his leave, till nine, to Counts of the Holy Roman Empire and Grand Signiors. I love the crush in the cloisters and the mob on the Mount -I love the clatter of carriages and the plunging of horsemen-I love the universal gaiety, from the peer who smiles and sighs that he is no longer an Eton boy, to the countrygirl who marvels that such little gentlemen have cocked hats and real swords. Give me a Montem with all its tomfoolery-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