The Muses, to their infinite disgrace as useful members of society, have for centuries been devoting their time to the sun, the moon, the stars, flowers, lips, hair, love, "kisses, tears, and smiles;" in short, to objects of mere enjoyment and beauty; greatly to the delight, it must be confessed, of the young and the romantic, but tending to no wise and useful purpose, and contributing to no profitable end. The long luxurious indolence of these nine inestimable young ladies for so many, many years, does appear to us to cast no slight shade upon their characters; and Parnassus itself does not "hold its own" as a place of any considerable repute, when the habits of its female frequenters are taken into account. It is, indeed, high time that the Muses should get into places of all work,--that they should earn their bread through habits of honest industry and integrity, and not be idling about the rose-trees, and wasting their powers on a sigh, an eyebrow, or a trumpery star. The time for useful exertion is come; and the days of dalliance, dreaming, and ethereal delight are passing away. Flora gives way to Cocker, and Apollo is whipped off the top of his own Grecian mount by the schoolmaster _abroad_. If the Muses do not now patronise statistical reports, poor-law estimates, and fat-cattle meetings, they will as surely "sink in their repute," ay, as surely as the name of their firm is "Clio, Tighe, Thalia, Hemans, Euterpe, Landon, Polyhymnia, Jenkinson, and Co." Imagination is all very well in its way; but does it know how "things are in the City?" Is it in the direction--it certainly ought to be--of the Great Northern Railway, or the Public Safety British Patent Axletree Conveyance Company? Can imagination "set a leg or an arm?" if not, why imagination may imagine itself carrying out its own shutters in these enlightened times, and shutting up its own shop at mid-day.