"But, ah! how fleeting thy renown! Thus treading on the heel of Brown; How vain thy spangled suit, thy gown Intended for three waiters: Ere Lansdowne's speech is at an end, I see a board of lamps descend, Whose orbs in bright confusion blend, And strew the floor with splinters. "Their smooth contents spread far and near, And in one tide impetuous smear Knight, Waiter, Liveryman, and Peer: Nay, even his Royal Highness The falling board no longer props, Owns, with amaze, the unwelcome drops And, premature anointment, swaps For oozy wet his dryness. "Fear shrieks in many a varied tone, Pale Beauty mourns her spotted zone, And heads and bleeding knuckles own The glittering prostration. Behold! thou wip'st thy crimson chin, And all is discord, all is din; While scalded waiters swear thee in With many an execration. "Yet, Lucas, smile in Fortune's spite; Dark mornings often change to bright; Ne'er shall this omen harm a wight So active and so clever. How buoyant, how elastic thou! With a lamp halo round thy brow, Prophetic Magog dubs thee now A Lighter man--than ever." _New Monthly Magazine._ * * * * * ROYAL APPETITES. Charles XII. was brave, noble, generous, and disinterested,--a complete hero, in fact, and a regular fire-eater. Yet, in spite of these qualifications and the eulogiums of his biographer, it is pretty evident to those who impartially consider the career of this potentate, that he was by no means of a sane mind. In short, to speak plainly, he was mad, and deserved a strait-waistcoat as richly as any straw-crowned monarch in Bedlam. A single instance, in _my_ opinion, fully substantiates this. I allude to his absurd freak at Frederickshall, when, in order to discover how long he could exist without nourishment, he abstained from all kinds of food for more than seventy hours! Now, would any man in his senses have done this? Would Louis XVIII., for instance, that wise and ever-to-be-lamented monarch? Had it been the _reverse_ indeed--had Charles, instead of practising starvation, adopted the opposite expedient, and endeavoured to ascertain the greatest possible quantity of meat, fruit, bread, wine, vegetables, Sec. &c. he could have _disposed of_ in any given time--why then it might have been something! But to _fast_ for three days! if this be not madness--! Indeed, there is but one reason I could ever conceive for a person not eating; and that is, when, like poor Count Ugolino and his family, he can get _nothing to eat_!