glittering bait of a medal or a star, have
gone to work. The manufacture of these cheap
rewards has thriven. The fierce opponent is
tamed by a decoration, and led from
revolutionary barricades to the avenues of palaces
by a riband-end. His wife was at his elbow.
He must be decorated. All their acquaintance
of any note were knights of at least
one order. How proud would she be to walk
with him, with his honours blushing on his
noble breast! The star would become a
splendid heirloom in the family. It was impossible
to refuse it. Families far less honourably
descended than his, could show decorations of many
orders worn by their ancestors. Would he go
to his grave leaving his children no memento
of his distinguished career? Would he be
borne to the cemetery like the Auvergnat round
the corner, when he might command a military
escort, and have the drum muffled in his honour?
Besides, he should observe how a decorated
gentleman took precedence of a plain gentleman
on all occasions. The man with a riband in
his button-hole carried his letter of introduction
and his passport upon his bosom. How
did a man of a certain age look in evening
dress, without the least bit of a cross upon him?
His unbroken black told the company that he
was an individual who had passed the meridian
of life without having done the least thing to
mark him from the mass of his fellow-creatures.
Until he became decorated, he was one of the
million.

Napoleon the First comprehended all the
uses of an order of chivalry when he established
the Legion of Honour. He took the old
European orders for the basis of his new institution,
and infused the spirit of the revolution into an
ancient art. He established a democratic order
of chivalry which should comprehend desert of
every description, and put the Marshal of
France beside the great artist, the renowned
composer, the first inventor. He knew what
he was about, when he took the bauble from his
own breast to place it upon that of the great
professor of science. The legionaries of France
are now spread over the broad face of the
empire, and their crosses and those of their
fathers are hung up in village homes. The red
riband keeps the bonnet rouge in order.

The desire for decoration at the button-hole
has become so fervid and so general on the
continent of Europe, that it has been found
necessary to proceed on system. We all know that
there are speculators who offer to buy the
ambitious man the cross of some petty state for
little more than the cost of the material; but
these are vulgarians in the art of human
decoration, whose dupes are of the lowest ignorant
description. The arts of self-decoration have
progressed apace of late years—not among
the vulgar, but in the midst of men of the
liberal professions, and among the rich, who
want to make a figure in drawing-rooms. Since
no gentleman's evening dress is now complete
without a star or a riband, it follows that there
must be a strong desire burning among men of
education who are addicted to the salons of the
Continent, to crave the favours of Anhalt, or
implore the smiles of Bavaria. The order of
Kamehama is only three years old, while the
military order of Alcantara was established by
the Abbé de Fitaro in 1177. If Monsieur de
Chope cannot hope to have his heart warmed
with the Garter or the Fleece, he must be
content to sue to their High Mightinesses of the
Sandwich Islands.

In order to put the polite world in possession,
of the information necessary to him who would
have the modern self-decorative arts at his
command, a guide has at length been
published.* It is the merest skeleton of a hand-
book, but then it is the first of its class. The
author or compiler has broken new ground.
The skeleton will be presently covered with
flesh, and clothed; and we shall have a complete
new science. For the present we must be
satisfied with a mere elementary work—a book
of rudiments in the art of cringing and
fawning.

* L'Art de se faire Decorer. Paris. Alean Levy.

The Self-Decorator's Handy-Book opens with
a chapter on Cross-Hunting. The writer justifies
his book by a preliminary survey of a Paris
ball-room—at an Embassy, or the Hotel de Ville.
The crowds of men dazzle the humble intruder's
sight with their crosses of brilliants. The
prismatic light dances in every corner—for the
love of diamond stars is as general as the love
of woman and more lasting. The writer is
acquainted with a young diplomatist who has
prepared an order box, in which there is a row
of compartments left vacant for the stars that
in the ordinary course of a diplomatic career
must fall into them. He remembers a musician
who went almost mad with pride and joy, when
he found the red rosette flaming on his coat. He
became so vain that he was unapproachable.
"I shall never forget one morning," writes
our professor of the self-decorative arts, "when
I was talking with him on the boulevard des
Italiens. An elegantly dressed lady brushed
him with her crinoline. Enraged at this
disrespect to his decoration, he turned savagely
upon her, and lifted his hand as though he were
about to knock her head off her shoulders with
his umbrella." The professor naïvely adds that
all people do not feel the reception of honours
with this intensity: a fact that is fortunate for
elegant ladies walking in Paris streets. Some
but these are rare birds, indeed are indifferent
about the Legion. The professor owned a human
dodo of this kind, for cousin. He was the oldest
mayor in France. Informed that the prefect
of his department was about to recommend
him to the Ministry of the Interior for the red
riband, the veteran replied: " And what should
I do with it, friend, in my eighty-second year?"
Béranger and the Legion is more to the purpose.
Louis Philippe offered the cross to the old
minstrel. Béranger replied: " Tell the king that I
thank him for his kind wish; but that I can accept
nothing from him, being a republican." The