exceedingly poetical, and also (mind, _also_, not _therefore_)
exceedingly nonsensical. No, Sir, the Cat and the Fiddle is of greater
antiquity. Did you ever read the History of Rome? Of Rome! yes, of Rome.
Thence comes the Cat and the Fiddle, in somewhat a roundabout way
perhaps, but so it is:

Vixtrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.

Cato was faithful to the sacred cause of liberty, and disdained to
survive it; and now for the fiddle. In the days of good Queen Bess, when
those who had borne the iron yoke of Mary, ventured forth and gloried in
that freedom of conscience which had lately been denied them, a jolly
innkeeper having lately cast off the shackles of the old religion,
likened himself to the old Roman, and wrote over his door _l'Hostelle du
Caton fidelle_. The hostelle and its sign lasted longer than the worthy
gentleman, and having gone shockingly to decay, was many years after
re-established. But alas! the numerous French words once mixed with our
language had vanished, barbarized, and ground down into a heterogeneous
mass of sounds; and _le Caton fidelle_ was no longer known to his best
friends when resuscitated under the anomalous title of the Cat and
Fiddle!!

XX.

* * * * *


THE BLIND GIRL.

_(For the Mirror.)_