"His capacity of intellectual development
under proper training, his strength and
docility, his industry, hia many noble qualities,
his patience and attachment under gentle
treatment, and his blind resentment when
provoked too far by ill-usage, rendered him,
besides, a touch ing symbol of the great English
people; and this idea was still further
expressed by his carrying trophies on his back,
expressive of their enterprise and valor. In
parading an animal so well known for its
aversion to carrion, and its liking for clean
provender, the City of London, pleasantly but
pointedly, avowed its determination to seek
out and confiscate all improper human food
exposed for sale within its liberties, and
particularly to look, with a searching eye, into
the knackers' yards, and the sausage trade.
I almost fancied," MR. BOOLEY proceeds,
"that the sagacious elephant knew his part
in the Allegory, and was conscious of the
whole Castle of meaning on his back, as he
proceeded gravely on, surveying the crowd
with his small, but highly intelligent eye.

"The two negroes by whom he was led,"
MR. BOOLEY goes on to remark, "rather
perplexed me. Can it be, that they had any
reference to certain estimable, but pig-headed
members of the Civic Parliament, who learn no
wisdom from experience and instruction; and
in humorous reference to whom, MR. BATTY
and the Lord Mayor suggested the impossibility
of ever washing the Blackamoor white?

"But now," he adds, "appeared what I
cannot but consider the crowning feature of
the allegory: in perfect harmony and keeping
with the rest, and pointing directly at the
removal of an absurd, a monstrous, and cruel
nuisance. I allude to the 'Two Deer of
America,' whose horns I no sooner observed
advancing along Cheapside, than I immediately
felt that an allusion was intended to
Smithfield Market. The little play upon
words, in which it was candidly admitted
that that nuisance was Two Dear to the
Corporation generally, might have struck
me, perhaps, as rather too obvious, if I had
been disposed to be hypercritical; but, the
introduction of horned beasts among the
crowd was in itself an Allegory, so pointed
and yet so ingenious and complete, that I
think I was never better pleased in my life.
On further reflection, I discovered a still more
profound and delicate meaning in the exhibition
of these animals. Their association with
the chase, typified the constant flight and
pursuit going on all over the City, and,
indeed, all over the Metropolis, on market-
days; while their easy connection in the
beholder's mind with those periods of English
history when it was a far greater crime to
kill a stag than to kill a man, reflected with
just severity on the obsolete inhumanity and
rapacity of the Corporation that cared for the
lives and limbs, neither of beasts nor men, in
the tenacity of its clutch at an old, pestilential,
worn out abuse.

"This," says MR. BOOLEY, in conclusion,
"is the Allegory that was presented to the
people last Lord Mayor's Day, and which I
have now had the satisfaction of explaining
to the Social Oysters. I deem it highly
honourable to the new Lord Mayor, whom I
cordially wish a prosperous and happy reign;
together with a vigorous determination to do
his utmost to carry out the needful reforms,
and remedy the crying evils, so ably glanced
at, by himself, on this auspicious occasion. As I
dined in the Guildhall after the show, I had
the honour of giving utterance to these wishes
(but not within his hearing) after dinner;
when, remembering this Allegory, I divined a
new meaning in the Loving Cup, and was
charmed to find the first City in the universe
bravely devoting its charter and liberties to
the welfare of the community, and not poorly
sheltering itself behind them, as an immunity
from the plainest human responsibilities. I
had the honour and pleasure of drinking his
lordship's health in a bumper of very excellent
wine; and I should have been happy to have
drunk to MR. BATTY too, if his health had
been proposed, which it was not."

UNIVERSITY OMISSION AND
COMMISSION.

THE other day I was poring over a leader
in a London paper, on the University Royal
Commission, when my chambers were
suddenly invaded by a jovial old gentleman who
had intrusted me with the pleasing task of
drawing up the marriage settlement of his
second daughter.

He is a rosy-faced elder, who, amidst all
the misfortunes of his earlier days, has
contrived to retain possession of his spirits and
of a certain cheerful and jocose way of
regarding every event that has befallen him.
Rushing into my rooms, without knocking, he
plunged at once as eagerly into the subject of
University reform and with as little regard to
the object of his visit as if his daughter
were destined to die an old maid. That
was his particular craze at that particular
juncture. "I'll tell you what it is," he
exclaimed, "it won't do any longer. The time
is past for it. The man who emerges from
his alma mater with the dead languages alone
for the purpose of struggling with the living,
breathing, bustling, buffetting world, is, as
in the present day, defenceless, as if he went
into battle with a rusty sword."

"Not quite," I ventured to reply; "they
give him the means to polish and sharpen his
weapons; which are his wits. A man turned
out with a thorough knowledge of the
fundamental structure of language and with
mathematics—with the means of reasoning and
judging correctly—may, if he chooses, learn
anything."

"So he may; but when it is too late;—when
the struggle has commenced; when he has no
time to do that which ought to have been