Maelstrom off Norway ever devoured ships. What room for elevating
themes in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal? Who can wonder
that in this haste for sun-gilded bawbles and winged thistle-down,
men should tumble into ruin? The travellers to destruction are not
all clothed in rags. On that road chariot jostles against chariot; and
behind steeds in harness golden-plated and glittering, they go down,
coach and four, herald and postilion, racketing on the hot pavements
of hell. Clear the track! Bazaars hang out their colors over the road;
and trees of tropical fruitfulness overbranch the way. No sound of
woe disturbs the air; but all is light and song, and wine and
gorgeousness. The world comes out to greet the dazzling procession
with Hurrah! and Hurrah! But, suddenly, there is a halt and an outcry
of dismay, and an overthrow worse than the Red Sea tumbling upon the
Egyptians. Shadow of grave-stones upon finest silk! Wormwood squeezed
into impearled goblets! Death, with one cold breath, withering the
leaves and freezing the fountains.

In the wild tumult of the last day--the mountains falling, the heavens
flying, the thrones uprising, the universe assembling; amid the boom
of the last great thunder-peal, and under the crackling of a burning
world--what will become of the fop and the dandy?

He who is genuinely refined will be useful and happy. There is no gate
that a gentleman's hand cannot open. During his last sickness there
will be a timid knock at the basement door by those who have come to
see how he is.

But watch the career of one thoroughly artificial. Through
inheritance, or perhaps his own skill, having obtained enough for
purposes of display, he feels himself thoroughly established. He sits