all disappeared. And now I see one of the young men alone. He is walking
in a street--a dark street--presently a light comes to a window. There
is the shadow of a lady who passes. He stands there till the light goes
out. Now he is in a room scribbling on a piece of paper, and kissing a
miniature every now and then. They seem to be lines each pretty much
of a length. I can read heart, smart, dart; Mary, fairy; Cupid, stupid;
true, you; and never mind what more. Bah! it is bosh. Now see, he has
got a gown on again, and a wig of white hair on his head, and he is
sitting with other dervishes in a great room full of them, and on a
throne in the middle is an old Sultan in scarlet, sitting before a desk,
and he wears a wig too--and the young man gets up and speaks to him. And
now what is here? He is in a room with ever so many children, and the
miniature hanging up. Can it be a likeness of that woman who is sitting
before that copper urn, with a silver vase in her hand, from which she
is pouring hot liquor into cups? Was SHE ever a fairy? She is as fat as
a hippopotamus now. He is sitting on a divan by the fire. He has a paper
on his knees. Read the name of the paper. It is the Superfine Review.
It inclines to think that Mr. Dickens is not a true gentleman, that Mr.
Thackeray is not a true gentleman, and that when the one is pert and
the other is arch, we, the gentlemen of the Superfine Review, think, and
think rightly, that we have some cause to be indignant. The great cause
why modern humor and modern sentimentalism repel us, is that they are
unwarrantably familiar. Now, Mr. Sterne, the Superfine Reviewer thinks,
"was a true sentimentalist, because he was ABOVE ALL THINGS a true
gentleman." The flattering inference is obvious: let us be thankful for
having an elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, if not too old,
to imitate his high-bred politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace.
If we are unwarrantably familiar, we know who is not. If we repel by
pertness, we know who never does. If our language offends, we know whose
is always modest. O pity! The vision has disappeared off the silver,