But don't forget to curl your hair!

_Blackwood's Mag._

* * * * *

GOG AND MAGOG.--(_A Fragment._)

Pensively and profoundly was I meditating, seated one evening upon a
stone bench in Guildhall, when, as the gathering gloom invested the
solemn faces of Gog and Magog, rendering them mysteriously dim and
indistinct, methought I saw them slowly shut their eyes, nod their
heads, fall asleep, and actually begin to snore. Never did I hear any
thing more sonorously grand and awful than that portentous inbreathing
of Gog and Magog, resounding through the Gothic vastness of Guildhall;
but, behold! how omnipotent is the dreaming imagination! I myself had
been dozing; the sound of my own nose, transferred by a metonymy of the
fancy to the nostrils of those wooden idols, had become, as it were, the
living apotheosis of a snore, which had subdued me by its sublimity.
Most fortunate was it that I awoke; for, on attentively inspecting the
faces of the figures, I saw them working and writhing with all the
contortions of the Pythoness or the Sibyl, labouring in the very throes
of inspiration, struggling with the advent of the prophetical afflatus.
At length their lips parted, when, in a low, solemn voice, that thrilled
through the dark, deserted, and silent hall, they poured forth
alternately the following vaticinal strain, each starting and trembling
as he concluded:--

"From Bank, Change, Mansion-house, Guildhall,
Throgmorton, and Threadneedle,