There was little space to muse or moralize over the embers of this
time-honored rubbish; for, before it was half burned out, there came
another multitude from beyond the sea, bearing the purple robes of
royalty, and the crowns, globes, and sceptres of emperors and kings.
All these had been condemned as useless bawbles, playthings at best,
fit only for the infancy of the world or rods to govern and chastise
it in its nonage, but with which universal manhood at its full-grown
stature could no longer brook to be insulted. Into such contempt
had these regal insignia now fallen that the gilded crown and
tinselled robes of the player king from Drury Lane Theatre had been
thrown in among the rest, doubtless as a mockery of his brother
monarchs on the great stage of the world. It was a strange sight to
discern the crown jewels of England glowing and flashing in the
midst of the fire. Some of them had been delivered down from the
time of the Saxon princes; others were purchased with vast revenues,
or perchance ravished from the dead brows of the native potentates
of Hindustan; and the whole now blazed with a dazzling lustre, as if
a star had fallen in that spot and been shattered into fragments.
The splendor of the ruined monarchy had no reflection save in those
inestimable precious stones. But enough on this subject. It were
but tedious to describe how the Emperor of Austria's mantle was
converted to tinder, and how the posts and pillars of the French
throne became a heap of coals, which it was impossible to
distinguish from those of any other wood. Let me add, however, that
I noticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the
Czar of Russia's sceptre, which he afterwards flung into the flames.

"The smell of singed garments is quite intolerable here," observed
my new acquaintance, as the breeze enveloped us in the smoke of a