first-growth Champagne, of Mocha coffee to one, and of gunpowder tea to
another, showed a knowledge of women and human nature, that must, but
for the malice of justice, inevitably have led to fortune. What will now
become of the countess, who led her daughters to this palace of Hygeia
as regularly as the day came; and with a spirit worthy of the great
cause, declared that, if she had twenty daughters, she would take every
one of them every day to the same place, for the same rubbing? What
will become of the heavy hours of him who declared St. John's gas a
qualification for the Cabinet, and that a sick minister applying to this
dispenser of all virtue, would be on his legs in the House, and making
a victorious speech within the twenty-four hours? What will become of
the battalion of beauties who, at every puff of the gas-pipe, ran to
their mirrors, and received the congratulations of the surrounding
dandies, or the revived carnation of their cheeks? "Othello's
occupation's o'er." But a St. John Long, of some kind or other, is
so essential to the West-end world, that a successor must be rapidly
erected in his room. Every age has its St. John Long, formed by the
mere necessities of the opulent and idle. A new Perkins, with a packet
of metallic tractors on a new scale would be extremely acceptable in
any handsome street in the neighbourhood of Grosvenor-square. Animal
magnetism would thrive prodigiously between this and the dust-months,
when London is left to the guardsmen and the cab-drivers; and when, as
Lady Jersey says, nobody who is anybody is to be seen in the streets
from morning till night, that is, from three till six. But the true
man of success would be Dr. Graham, of famous memory; the heir of his
talents would make a fortune in any season of the year; and now that
St. John Long has vacated the throne, nothing could be more favourable
for his ambition, than to take advantage of the interregnum, and make
himself monarch of charlatanry without loss of time.--From "Notes of
the Month," by far the most piquant portion of the _Monthly Mag_.