Looking at thyself within the glass,
      You appear lost in admiration ;
      You deceive yourself, and think, alas !
      You are a wonder of creation.

If it be alleged that the poet-laureate of Love
is somewhat halt, it must be remembered that
Love himself is blind. I have not heard that a
butt of sherris sack forms part of the reward of
Cupid's laureate; but I believe his verses are
estimated as being worth twopence a line, which
is, at any rate, a penny over the conventionally
standard price of prose. At this price, the poem
just quoted would come to eightpence. But the
great difficulty in dealing with the valentine poet
is to make him comprehend that brevity is not
only the soul of wit, but the essence of economy.
His efforts are very frequently vain, owing to
his strong disposition to spin the subject out
to twelve lines, and make an even shilling of it.
There are many pounds of poetry up-stairs that
would have been declined with thanks had they
not been furnished by contract.

It might be imagined that the hard practical
nature of our time had tended in some degree to
bring the sending of valentines into contempt, as
being a practice beneath the dignity of the age.
But this is by no means the case. Cupid informs
me that, in the height of his season, he turns
out two hundred and fifty pounds' worth of
valentines a week, and at these times he pays
about a hundred and sixty pounds a week in
wages. That his business is yearly on the
increase is proved by the annual report of the
Postmaster-General, which shows that, while
the number of valentines which passed through
the London office in 1862 was four hundred and
thirty thousand, in 1863 it was upwards of four
hundred and fifty thousand. The iron of our
age has not entered the national soul so deeply,
after all.

OLD CLOTHES.

NOTHING, perhaps, is so full of sad
suggestiveness as an old-clothes shop. It is an
epitome of human life, working out in its own
dumb way the form, if not the solution, of many of
the problems which oppress us, and setting forth
in faded, melancholy fashion, the vanity of all
earthly things, and how transitory is all created
beauty. Each coat and hat and limp loose
gown might be a text for preachers, and no one
need sit vacant for want of thought while ragged
remnants of past glories are mouldering in the
dingy air beside him. The histories of whole
families are written there, and the saddest
tragedies that evil days and folly can enact
together are phrased in those shabby wardrobes,
offering their decayed gentlehood to the baser
world. What analogies may we not find and
make there! The flimsy tags of Florinda the
stage-duchess, come down by steady degradation
to Dolly the dairymaid, and that Dolly a Whitechapel
dairymaid, who would as soon attempt
to milk an elephant as a cow – why that one
single image is an essay in itself on all things
sham and seeming ! The fine velvet bonnet
that once bent its stateliness to Royalty in
the Park, passing through the crush-mill of
time and servile uses, till it falls to final ruin
on the head of a crossing sweeper – could the
Preacher himself have found a fitter example
for his piteous cry over the falling of the
mighty, and the vanity of vanities of which life
and the earth are made? Look at that soiled,
worn baby's frock hanging up by the torn sleeve,
and marked at just a few pence, so few as to be
within the compass of a very beggar. Soiled
and worn, the texture of that baby's frock can
scarcely be made out from here, but take it in
your hand and examine it for yourself; you will
find it to be of richest silk, fit for the coronation
robes of the Queen of Sheba. That was the
countess's court-dress one gorgeous June day.
By degrees my lady's gown lost little and little,
and more and more, of its lustrous loveliness,
till it grew dull enough for Abigail, who pranced
to church in it on Sundays, proud as my lady
herself on that memorable presentation day.
Then it went to Abigail's little nieces at the
greengrocer's yonder – the standard Sunday
frock for many years, till at last cut down to
baby's requirements, whence, when baby had
grown big, was no beyond. And then it came to
the old-clothes shop, and perhaps to the singing
beggar with a borrowed baby in the streets.

Look at that girl's ball-dress, once so light
and pure; useless, if you will, like all a girl's
pleasures – the mere froth of human life, but of
the froth that floated Venus Anadyomene to the
Cyprian shore – and see what it is now: a
ball-dress still, but fit only for a gathering of
chimney-sweeps, each in his own colours, sable
splashed with gules. Have the freshness and
purity gone out of her soul as they have out of
her dress? From being fit comrade of the
vestals, with robes as snowy and spotless as
theirs, has she fallen into ranks which the soil
of burnt-out ashes and the stain of impure fires
have sealed and marked to enduring degradation?
That torn, soiled, tattered ball-dress,
once so fresh in its virginal grace and modesty,
ah me! it is no pleasant sight to see it swinging
here, crushed into disgraceful foulness, among
these worn-out castings of recklessness and
ruin! Side by side with this hangs a widow's
"suit of sables," glossy and fresh, the crispness
of the crape untouched, and the depth of blackness
in the solemn stuff by no means rusted by
use. There they lie, handy for the first poor
weeping applicant, who will not stop to ask
why they look so new and feel so fresh, or how
it comes to pass that the snowy cap is snowy
yet, or why the deep crape veil has no tear-
dimmed spaces on it. Grief and poverty together
will blind one eye and open the other; for
when our own hearts are saturated with sorrow
we have seldom any sympathy left running over
for balm to the sorrows of others; and when the
metal lining of our purses has fallen away to a
mere glaze, like picture-frame gilding, we are
not often solicitous as to the reason why we
obtain a shilling's worth for our worn-out six-