GONE TO THE DOGS.

WE all know what treasures Posterity will
inherit, in the fulness of time. We all know
what handsome legacies are bequeathed to it
every day, what long luggage-trains of Sonnets
it will be the better for, what patriots and
statesmen it will discover to have existed in
this age whom we have no idea of, how very
wide awake it will be, and how stone blind
the Time is. We know what multitudes of
disinterested persons are always going down
to it, laden, like processions of genii, with
inexhaustible and incalculable wealth. We
have frequent experience of the generosity
with which the profoundest wits, the subtlest
politicians, unerring inventors, and lavish
benefactors of mankind, take beneficent aim
at it with a longer range than Captain
Warner's, and blow it up to the very heaven of
heavens, one hundred years after date. We all
defer to it as the great capitalist in expectation,
the world's residuary legatee in respect
of all the fortunes that are not just now
convertible, the heir of a long and fruitful
minority, the fortunate creature on whom all
the true riches of the earth are firmly
entailed. When Posterity does come into its
own at last, what a coming of age there
will be!

It seems to me that Posterity, as the
subject of so many handsome settlements, has
only one competitor. I find the Dogs to be
every day enriched with a vast amount of
valuable property.

What has become—to begin like Charity
at home—what has become, I demand, of the
inheritance I myself entered on, at nineteen
years of age!  A shining castle (in the air)
with young Love looking out of window,
perfect contentment and repose of spirit
standing with ethereal aspect in the porch,
visions surrounding it by night and day with
an atmosphere of pure gold. This was my
only inheritance, and I never squandered it.
I hoarded it like a miser. Say, bright-eyed
Araminta (with the obdurate parents),
thou who wast sole lady of the castle, did I
not? Down the flowing river by the walls,
called Time, how blest we sailed together,
treasuring our happiness unto death, and
never knowing change, or weariness, or
separation! Where is that castle now, with all
its magic furniture? Gone to the Dogs.
Canine possession was taken of the whole of
that estate, my youthful Araminta, about a
quarter of a century ago.

Come back, friends of my youth.  Come
back from the glooms and shadows that have
gathered round thee, and let us sit down
once more, side by side, upon the rough,
notched form at school! Idle is Bob Tample,
given to shirking his work and getting me to
do it for him, inkier than a well-regulated
mind in connection with a well-regulated body
is usually observed to be, always compounding
with his creditors on pocket-money
days, frequently selling-off pen-knives by
auction, and disposing of his sister's birthday
presents at an enormous sacrifice. Yet,
a rosy, cheerful, thoughtless fellow is Bob
Tample, borrowing with an easy mind,
sixpences of Dick Sage the prudent, to pay
eighteenpences after the holidays, and freely
standing treat to all comers. Musical is
Bob Tample. Able to sing and whistle
anything. Learns the piano (in the
parlor), and once plays a duet with
the musical professor, Mr. Goavus of the
Royal Italian Opera (occasional-deputy-
assistant-copyist in that establishment, I
have since seen reason to believe), whom
Bob's friends and supporters, I foremost in
the throng, consider tripped up in the first
half-dozen bars. Not without bright
expectations is Bob Tample, being an orphan
with a guardian near the Bank, and destined
for the army. I boast of Bob at home that
his name is "down at the Horse Guards,"
and that his father left it in his will that " a
pair of colours" (I like the expression without
particularly knowing what it means),
should be purchased for him. I go with Bob
on one occasion to look at the building
where his name is down. We wonder in
which of the rooms it is down, and whether
the two horse soldiers on duty know it. I also
accompany Bob to see his sister at Miss
Maggiggs's boarding establishment at Hammersmith,
and it is unnecessary to add that I think
his sister beautiful and love her. She will be
independent, Bob says. I relate at home
that Mr. Tample left it in his will that his
daughter was to be independent. I put Mr.
Tample, entirely of my own accord and
invention, into the army; and I perplex my