history, and the phantoms of a bodiless tradition? Those brilliant.
suppers, glittering with beauty, the memory of which makes one spot (yet
inherited by Bachelor Bill) a haunted and a fairy ground; all who
gathered to that Armida's circle,--the Grammonts and the Beauvilliers and
the Rochefoucaulds of England and the Road,--who does not feel that to
have seen these, though but as Gil Blas saw the festivities of his
actors, from the sideboard and behind the chair, would have been a
triumph for the earthlier feelings of his old age to recall? What,
then, must it have been to have seen them as thou didst see,--thou, the
deceased and the forgotten!---seen them from the height of thy youth and
power and rank (for early wert thou keeper to a public), and reckless
spirits, and lusty capacities of joy? What pleasures where sense
lavished its uncounted varieties? What revellings where wine was the
least excitement?

Let the scene shift. How stirring is the change! Triumph and glitter
and conquest! For thy public was a public of renown; thither came the
Warriors of the Ring,--the Heroes of the Cross,--and thou, their patron,
wert elevated on their fame! "Principes pro victoria pugnant, comites
pro Principe."--[Chiefs for the victory fight,--for chiefs the soldiers]
--What visions sweep across us! What glories didst thou witness! Over
what conquests didst thou preside! The mightiest epoch, the most
wonderful events which the world, _thy_ world, ever knew,--of these was
it not indeed, and dazzlingly thine,--

"To share the triumph and partake the gale"?

Let the scene shift. Manhood is touched by age; but Lust is "heeled" by
Luxury, and Pomp is the heir of Pleasure; gewgaws and gaud, instead of
glory, surround, rejoice, and flatter thee to the last. There rise thy