triumph of art. There the twelfth-cakes extend "their white expanse of mimic snow," fit trophies for winter. I admire the national feeling that inspired their decorations; a little crowd are growing patriotic about yonder window. In the centre is a huge cake iced couleur de rose; all the devices are nautical, and it is surrounded with a border of shells which might puzzle a conchologist, but serve to show what a prodigality of invention there is in the most ordinary productions. In the centre is a cannon, and against it there is leaning a youth in a blue jacket and black handkerchief—the beau ideale of our nation's beau ideale—"a true British sailor." A little beyond is a fruiterer's shop. I prefer a fruiterer's in winter to any other time; it most excites my imagination. There are the oranges and the Lisbon grapes, associate with "summer soft skies." Spanish chestnuts, which bring to mind the stately trees where they grew, and all the wild tales of muleteers, guitars, and moonlight, which last seems made on purpose for Spain; but, of all, commend me to those Eastern treasures—dates. I never see one of those slender straw baskets filled with "the desert fruit" without losing myself in a delicious remembrance of those "Arabian Nights" which made so many a former day too short. I am no great believer in the superior happiness of childhood—it has its troubles. I remember a little Indian girl of some three years old, who was already forced to look back with
"That regret which haunts our riper years,"
on some occasion of juvenile delinquency, when she was condemned to the ordinary punishment of "being put in the corner." "Ah!" exclaimed the poor little thing, her large black eyes—larger even than usual with the big tears swelling in them, there only being a little pride to be gulped down before they fell—"Ah! there were no corners in Calcutta." If, even at three years old, we turn to the pleasures of memory, the less that is asserted about the felicity of childhood, the less there will be to dispute. Still it is the period when the Arabian Nights were first read, and that is enough to make up for a horde of catechisms of history, mythology, botany, &c., almost for the multiplication-table itself. Another attraction—one, too, whose
"Coming events cast their shadows before,"
in the shape of large black and red letters, gigantic in themselves, and gigantic in their promises—I mean play-bills. I am passionately fond of the theatre; and in spite of the present adoption of "Jeremiah's lamentations" on the "decline of the drama," there are a great multitude, to use an established phrase, "who will enter into my feelings." I am afraid that this said drama, like every thing else in the present time, must lay aside something of its former kingly pomp. The crown and sceptre in real life are consigned to the Tower, and I fear in the theatre they must be consigned to the treasury, kept by the sword with which Kean acted Richard III., "glorious memorials of the royal past." No more will
"Gorgeous tragedy, in sceptred pall, come sweeping by."
But I believe that the sphere of action will be made more intense by its wider range; there will always be passion, crime, and sorrow enough in the human heart for tragic materials. But I was going to speak of the pantomimes—those visions of fairy-land—those legacies left us by
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