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SONG OF THE DEMONS.

BY THE CELEBRATED NICCOLO MACCHIAVELLI, ON OCCASION OF A GRAND FESTIVAL

HELD AT FLORENCE.

ONCE blest! but happy spirits now no more,

Whose rash o'ervaulting pride

From Heaven supreme cast us in terror,-lower
Than mortals e'en abide;

We come to claim a surer empire here

To rule your state from side to side

Torn by more factions fierce than OUR dread regions fear.

Lo! famine, war, bloodshed, sharp fire, and cold,

To goad each mortal fate,

Still mete we out till the dread sum be told;

And 'midst this festal state

Unbidden guests 'tis ours to dwell with you,
Till every evil soon or late

Be well wrought out,-to our fell purpose true.

See Pluto there-and there that dark-eyed queen
He bore from Enna's Vale,

Most beautiful that so it might be seen

How great love did prevail

Even over hell and him who sways

Those regions dark, that hail

Their restless king, whose 'hest each shade obeys.

Each rapture and each pang of mighty love,

By us is barb'd and sped;

The sob or smile-the song, the sighs that move,

And all in lover's fancy bred.

We crown their joys to deal the blow,

Severest, o'er young hearts that bled,

And future pangs prepare that all our power may

know*.

SONNET.

LADY, I think, whenever I look on you,

That your sweet eyes are like the stars of night,
Set in a circling world of azure light,

So like the stars, their rays do sparkle through

A halo of such clear aerial hue!

And oft I think them spirits of the bright,
That only do appear to mortal sight,

When star-throned in your eyes most Heavenly blue.
How I should love to gaze into those eyes!

For there methinks I should some secrets see,
They are so like bright pieces of the skies
That surely they could tell a tale to me
Of visions seen where stars do set and rise!
But ah! such gazing on them may not be!

C. H. W.

allegorical It was on occasion of this brilliant festival, amidst the most magnficent display of cuous, that owing to the numbers of the people, the bridge over the Arno gave way, scenes and personages, among which a body of demons was very conspiand thousands were engulphed in its waves.

VOL. VIII.

I

114

THE MAN WHO MAKES BARGAINS.

BY RUSSELL GRAHAM.

You meet with him anywhere and everywhere; for places are immaterial to him, so that bargains are to be had. Plunging into pawnbrokers' shops, lingering at appraisers' windows, haunting auctionrooms and "selling off" establishments, emerging from marine-stores, ransacking second-hand stalls, on his way to the "cheapest house in town," or about to be present at one of those "immense sacrifices" that every wall-side and newspaper proclaims. Utterly regardless of Franklin's philosophy, the description of article is a matter of perfect indifference to him. A "bargain is a bargain" in his estimation, however useless or unsuitable it turns out: a blacksmith's hammer or a lady's étui would be equal subjects of rejoicing, so they were purchased at a low figure. It is the same thing to him whether he picks them up at one of George Robins' recherché sales, or at an auction of unredeemed pledges-whether he stumbles over them in Broker's Alley, or comes across them in the New Cut.

To such an one politics and the general news are nothing to the advertising side of a paper. You may know him in the next box to you at the Jerusalem, or Garraway's, by the time he keeps possession of it. You are probably anxious to get a glance at the day's "Times," there is but one copy disengaged, and at the instant you are about to take it up, the man who makes bargains (and is even now on the lookout for them) puts his hand on it. You mutter something about being glad to look at it when he has done, sink into your seat, and solace yourself with the stale columns of yesterday's "Chronicle." Its way of thinking not being yours, it affects you with a political heartburn, haply mollified by the entrance of the waiter with the smoking rumpsteak, white-robed potatoes, pickles, and stout, (chalk and milk, by the way, in such cases,) and, for a while, the "leader" in the "Times" is forgotten; but your appetite cooling in exact ratio with the water plate, you begin to feel you have a stake in other matters, and to look round in the expectation that your neighbour has finished the clever summary of last night's doings in the "House." Fatal mistake! He has not so much as once glanced at it, and is only half way down the advertised "sales by auction," lingering over "eligible investments," or luxuriating among the "Capital feather-beds,' "Drawing-room suites in solid rosewood, sideboards, dining-tables, old port and sherry, indulging and devotional chairs," &c., with which the Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson, of the rostrum and hammer, tickle the inclinations of those open coveters of other men's goods—the habitués of auctionrooms, and makers of bargains.

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To one, or, rather, both these classes, my uncle, Captain Tittlebrat, belongs. He believes he has a genius for bargain-making, just as firm as other people believe him to be what Dogberry desired to be "writ down" for his pains. It is his hobby, upon which let him once get fair astride, and he is as unseatable as a centaur. God knows it has stumbled often enough since he has taken up with it! but the old gentleman still ambles on complacently, as if it were sure-footed as the mules of Cintra. Talk to him of furnishing your house, and ten to one but he offers to do it for you, (of course the exchequer department

resting with yourself,) or he proffers to put you in a way of doing so, at half the ordinary expense. He knows an old-established auctionmart in the City, where, if you are not fastidiously particular, he is certain you may suit yourself to a T, or a cranny leading out of Long Acre, where things are to be had dirt cheap. To be sure they are a little out of order, and not exactly the last style of make; but some trifling repairs, and fresh scraping and polishing, will make them look almost equal to new, and no fear of their warping, or blistering, or falling to pieces-the now general complaints of ready-made furniture. In fact, he has no idea of purchasing in the ordinary way of trade, preferring furniture as a Laplander does his wife, with the blush off, and, from a mousetrap to a grand piano, knowing of some second-hand repository, where he may suit his own notions of domestic economy. Go into his house, and you are struck by the heterogeneous aspect of everything in it. His hobby has been ridden there with a vengeance; cantered through every apartment in it, and may be traced from the entrance to the attics. At a first glance you perceive that the hall chairs are not fellows-that the very stair-rods are of different lengths, and that the mythological divinity intended (on company nights) to do the duty of a link-boy, on the landing-place, stands there -unfortunately for his office-divested of his dexter arm. In the drawing-room the hobby still prevails: every item in it has been bought a bargain, from the half-worn, ill-fitting Brussels, tarnished cornice, and faded curtains, to the imperfect ornaments, and or-molu timepieces, pranked here and there, by way of decoration. But it is in the family sitting-room where this mania for bargain-making most obtrusively exhibits itself-where all its inconvenience and folly, brought together, tells its own moral, like the catastrophe of a story in a tail-piece. Here are clocks without hands, globes with half an horizon, first and last volumes, with the intermediate ones wanting, curtains of one material, cushions of another-here a table halting on three legs, and there, one with a fractured leaf. The straight-backed mahogany chairs, with wasted legs and satin-wood veneering, naturally enough suggest themselves the remains of primal housekeeping; but no, comparatively speaking, they are the purchase of yesterday, and while Mrs. Tittlebrat deplores the folly of giving them house-room, her husband dives his hand into some hidden aperture of the seat, and produces a sample of the stuffing, triumphantly informing you that there is no cheating there-no hay-no humbug! but genuine, unsophisticated, warranted horse-hair. It is upon some such satisfactory principle that all his bargains are defended-they have been sound articles at one time or another, and it seems sufficient for his happiness to know it. He makes no allowance for freshness or fashion, but estimates his second-hand purchases by the price he is asked for new, and, in this way, has generally a handsome balance on which to vaunt himself, whenever the pent-up indignation of his lady breaks forth at finding every apartment in her house daily assimilating more and more to the incongruous appearance of a broker's show-room. There is no use flattering yourself that he knows nothing of such and such a sale, he scents out auctions at any distance-keeps a catalogue of private and public contracts for every day in the week, and memorandums the advertisement of a cant of condemned stores at Woolwich Warren with as much avidity as an alderman does the announcement of a civic

whitebait dinner at Blackwall. Such a capital opportunity, he tells you, for the purchase of cheap fire-wood. But, alas! should a lot of old shakos, broken muskets, cartouche-boxes, a few drums, or an old gun-carriage or two, be going cheap, in all probability his fureur for bargain-making will prompt him to outbid some general dealer, to whom the old brass, leather, and iron, amongst them, make them of value, while to my uncle they are none, except to add to the heaps of rubbish that already surcharge the yard and outhouses of his establishment, and which Mrs. Tittlebrat makes no scruple of saying she should be glad to pay somebody to take away. Somebody, however, appears indifferent to the job, for I have heard it talked about for years without anything coming of it. In the meanwhile, there seems no symptom of declension in my uncle's mania. The house will scarcely hold, as it is, the accumulation of bargains with which he has repleted it. Yet is he as intently bent on making them as ever. Mrs. Tittlebrat confesses she has lost all patience, and acts accordingly; by no means confining her lectures to curtains, but letting him hear a "bit of her mind," not in homoeopathic quantities either, wherever she happens to find an opportunity. It was but the other day, happening to step down stairs just as the captain returned from one of his auction-room expeditions, I overheard her voice pitched in the contralto tones of suffering conjugation, and louder than the dissonance of a dozen falling articles of tinware that had just been deposited in the hall.

"What! more tea-trays, Mr. Tittlebrat? Twelve tea-trays, and not a decent bread-basket in the house! Was ever such folly! Buying things you know nothing about-bringing home a parcel of trash not worth the carriage!"

"But you haven't heard what I gave for them," interposed the bargain maker.

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Gave for them!" repeated Mrs. Tittlebrat, contemptuously. "If I had my way, I wouldn't give them house room. There's the hangings you bought for the children's bed won't even bear a needle, and the Marcelles counterpane you boasted such a bargain, all to pieces the first time of washing! Cheap, indeed! A few shillings more than you gave for them would have purchased good articles, and would have lasted our lifetime, while the money those things cost is completely thrown away. You couldn't do better than have an auction of your own. I'm sure there's quite enough useless, worn-out things about the house that want getting rid of. Not a room in it fit to be seen, nor a thing in them like any one else's-not a decent piece of furniture; nothing but bargains-and such bargains!-fit only to make bonfires of."

"Vain endeavour, my dear madam, to argue a man off his hobby. It is one of those cases in which persuasion is better than force, and the conviction of experience better than either."

"Conviction, Mr. Jones! There is no such thing as convincing Captain Tittlebrat; every day only makes him more headstrong-more infatuated-more resolutely bent on making bargains, and beggars of the children and me."

Yes, signal as were these failures, (that have served my aunt as quotations ever since,) they have failed to convince the captain of the impositions practised under the wand of the appraiser. He regards them but as the exceptions to the general rule-the addle eggs of tenfold repaying broods of bargains; and under the illusion of wisdom,

and with a view to economy, is daily committing some folly or another, and making the dearest bargains in the world.

It is better dining with "Duke Humphrey "any day than with my uncle-at least for me, who, by virtue of propinquity, am privileged to to take "pot luck "(odious phrase)! and a place in the family parlour -privileges, by the way, that, like the Ghost in Hamlet, I find "questionable." In the first place, there is all the excitement of a lottery in taking your seat. If you throw yourself on a sofa, not knowing the "set of it," as a milliner would say, ten chances to one but the scroll gives way, or you overturn it; while a random descent on the chairs is equally dangerous, as, in all probability, you choose a wrong one-some rickety, disjointed affair-one of a monstrously cheap lot, that slips from under you, or, like a deceptious friend, "lets you in," exhibiting, when too late, (for your composure,) a by no means fanciful similitude to "Bottom's dream," feeling through every shaken nerve of your system, the truth of the Irish apophthegm, which says, You may as well kill a man as frighten the life out of him." You go to dinner with what "appetite you may." The furniture of the table (an equal medley with that of the apartment) involuntarily reminds one of Catherine Alexowna's code of etiquette and a Russian dinner-service, in those days when the poverty of plate and the prevalence of petty larceny obliged every guest to bring his own knife and fork. The variety occasioned by this regulation could scarcely exceed that which prevails in these appurtenances at my uncle's. You may take a bet that half the knives are not by the same maker, and as for the spoons and forks, almost every second one exhibits a separate illustration of heraldry; but so long as he can plume himself on a saving of two shillings an ounce in the purchase-money, I fancy he is indifferent to crests. This heterodox appearance in the table equipage is a mere trifle—a sin against good taste only; but it is well if the meal passes over without producing some more obvious inconvenience of bargain-making. Nothing more likely than to receive externally the contents of the tureen; that trifling crack that constituted it such a bargain most unexpectedly giving way, and depositing the soup ad libitum; or the occasional leaf of the table, owing to some imperfection, (which, however, made it all the cheaper,) falls into your lap, bringing with it the greater part of the dishes, and destroying not only the disposition of the board, but the tempers of those around it. Nor are these catastrophes by any means hyperbolic; every philosophical follower of the system expects them-looks out for them, and, if he be wise, prepares against them. But, in general, there is a supineness of action in your bargain-makers-a belief in the possibility of obtaining them at will, that renders them indifferent to making the most of those they do get. The repairing and scraping and polishing that was to restore their soundness and good looks is procrastinated from day to day, till the unsightliness and inconvenience of their condition (unless recalled by some such domestic shock as I have imagined) becomes from habit, unfelt, and at length finding it too late to do anything with them, they fall piecemeal into uselessness and lumber. Such has been the fate of many of the Tittlebrat bargains-things that promised pretty well, too, had the emendations proposed at first taken place; but as the expense, in every instance, was found greater than the first cost, the idea was, after a while, wholly abandoned. I have now little

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