This precious, supple instrument, confect Of the whale's bone, and of the silkworm's grave, With outstretched wing, my brow will oft protect From the wet onslaught of the pluvial wave. Have we not here Academic verse well made for the Umbrellas of the Academicians! To come to extremes: among the popular songs, we hear the song of /the Umbrella/, "a ditty found in a whale"-- The good Umbrella may be sung In many airs and ways; The Umbrella, be we old or young, Will serve us all our days. It keeps true love from getting wet, And catching cold at night; It hides the thief, to business set, From the policeman's sight. Umbrella! Then buy yourself, for fear of rain, A solid, useful, good, and plain Umbrella! In fact, for rain we cannot sell a Much better thing than our Umbrella! This funny song is well worth the tiresome verse sung at present-- He has not an Umbrella, well It is no matter, while it's fine; But when the rain comes down pell-mell, Why, then he's wetted to the spine! . . . . Certainly one ought to write a physiological monograph of these black mushrooms, which to-day protect humanity, just as one ought to rhyme a poem of the dainty Sunshade, that pretty rosy cupola, which is one of the most charming coquetries of a Frenchwoman. We write this /one ought/ with a vague sadness, with the discouragement which makes us wish for the future, what we should have been so glad to bury in the past. In beginning our work, we experienced a careless joy, we thought the end was near on our very entry into the field, and that we should quickly attain it, with the satisfaction of having created a little work, both complete and altogether graceful; but once on our way, ferreting without relaxation in all the literary thickets where some Parasol might lie buried, in the fold of a phrase, in the middle of a story, of an anecdote, or of a dissertation, of some fact, we have gathered so ample a harvest, our sheaf has become so large, so very large, that it was impossible for us to bind our arms about it, after having co-ordinated its various parts. It is but a few poor strays then which lie stranded here, the flotsam and jetsam of our hope, sole vestiges of a project which, like all projects, became Homeric as it grew great in the workshop of the imagination. We end this essay, therefore, with a sentiment of ridicule, in which we laugh at our own selves, that of having dreamed of making a perfect monograph, and of having produced nothing more than a little tumbled fantasy, which ironically steals away out of sight, like that minuscular mouse, of which the mountain was once upon a time delivered in much moaning. What matter! We must end. Let us hide our melancholy retreat by humming this last lovely burden of a poet of the school of Clairville--