Scene from Old Fortunatus.

DEKKER.

[THOMAS DEKKER, or DECKER, was one of the numerous band of dramatists that belong to the Shakespearian era. The exact time of his birth and death is not known. Between Dekker and Ben Jonson there was a fearful feud, and they each satirised the other on the public stage. There is much vigour and dramatic force, with, occasionally, very beautiful poetry, in many of Dekker's plays. Like several of his contemporary dramatists he wrote many plays in union with other writers. The drama of "Old Fortunatus" is founded upon the story of Fortunatus's purse ;-it is very extravagant in parts; but the opening scene is a favourable specimen of the author's power. It commences with the entrance of a Gardener, a Smith, a Monk, a Shepherd, all crowned; a Nymph, with a Globe, another with Fortune's Wheel, then Fortune: after her four Kings with broken Crowns and Sceptres, chained in Silver Gyves, and led by her. The first four come out singing; the four Kings lie down at the feet of Fortune, who treads on their Bodies as she ascends her Chair. After the Kings have uttered laments of her cruelty, and the others have celebrated her might, she selects Fortunatus as the object of her capricious bounty.]

For. Thou shalt be one of Fortune's minions;

Six gifts I spend upon mortality,

Wisdom, strength, health, beauty, long life, and riches;
Out of my bounty, one of these is thine,

Choose, then, which likes thee best.

Fort. Oh, most divine!

Give me but leave to borrow wonder's eye,

To look, amazed, at thy bright majesty.

Wisdom, strength, health, beauty, long life, and riches?
For. Before thy soul (at this deep lottery)
Draw forth her prize, ordain'd by destiny;
Know that here's no recanting a first choice;
Choose then discreetly (for the laws of Fate
Being graven in steel, must stand inviolate.)

Fort. Daughters of Jove and the unblemish'd Night,
Most righteous Parcæ, guide my genius right!
Wisdom, strength, health, beauty, long life, and riches?

For. Stay, Fortunatus, once more hear me speak;
If thou kiss wisdom's cheek and make her thine,
She'll breathe into thy lips divinity,

And thou, like Phoebus, shalt speak oracle;
Thy heaven-inspired soul, on wisdom's wings,
Shall fly up to the parliament of Jove,
And read the statutes of eternity,

And see what's past, and learn what is to come:
If thou lay claim to strength, armies shall quake
To see thee frown; as kings at mine do lie,
So shall thy feet trample on empery:

Make health thine object, thou shalt be strong proof,
'Gainst the deep searching darts of surfeiting;

Be ever merry, ever revelling :

Wish but for beauty, and within thine eyes

Two naked Cupids amorously shall swim,

And on thy cheeks I'll mix such white and red,
That Jove shall turn' away young Ganymede,
And with immortal hands shall circle thee:

Are thy desires long life? thy vital thread

Shall be stretch'd out; thou shalt behold the change
Of monarchies; and see those children die
Whose great-great grandsires now in cradles lie:
If through gold's sacred* hunger thou dost pine;
Those gilded wantons, which in swarms do run
To warm their slender bodies in the sun,
Shall stand for number of those golden piles,
Which in rich piles shall swell before thy feet;
As those are, so shall these be infinite.
Awaken then thy soul's best faculties,

And gladly kiss this bounteous hand of Fate,
Which strives to bless thy name of Fortunate.

Kings. Old man, take heed! her smiles will murder thee,
The others. Old man, she 'll crown thee with felicity.
Fort. Oh, whither am I wrapt beyond myself?

* Sacra is used in the sense of the "Auri sacra fames" of Virgil.

More violent conflicts fight in every thought,

Than his, whose fatal choice Troy's downfall wrought.
Shall I contract myself to wisdom's love?

Then I lose riches; and a wise man, poor,

Is like a sacred book that's never read,

To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead.

This age thinks better of a gilded fool,

Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school.
I will be strong: then I refuse long life;
And though mine arm shall conquer twenty worlds,
There's a lean fellow beats all conquerors:

The greatest strength expires with loss of breath,
The mightiest (in one minute) stoop to death.
Then take long life, or health; should I do so,
I might grow ugly; and that tedious scroll
Of months and years much misery may inroll;
Therefore I'll beg for beauty; yet I will not:
The fairest cheek hath oftentimes a soul
Leprous as sin itself, than hell more foul.
The wisdom of this world is idiotism;
Strength a weak reed; health sickness' enemy,
(And it at length will have the victory ;)
Beauty is but a painting; and long life
Is a long journey in December gone,
Tedious, and full of tribulation,

Therefore, dread sacred empress, make me rich;
[Kneels down
My choice is store of gold; the rich are wise:
He that upon his back rich garments wears
Is wise, though on his head grow Midas' ears:
Gold is the strength, the sinews of the world;
The health, the soul, the beauty most divine
A mask of gold hides all deformities:
Gold is heaven's physic, life's restorative;
Oh, therefore make me rich! not as the wretch
That only serves lean banquets to his eye,

Has gold, yet starves; is famished in his store:
No, let me ever spend, be never poor.

For. Thy latest words confine thy destiny;
Thou shalt spend ever, and be never poor:
For proof receive this purse; with it this virtue;
Still when thou thrust'st thy hand into the same,
Thou shalt draw forth ten pieces of bright gold,
Current in any realm where then thou breathest;
If thou canst dribble out the sea by drops,

Then shalt thou want; but that can ne'er be done,
Nor this grow empty.

Fort. Thanks, great deity!

For. The virtue ends when thou and thy sons end.
This path leads thee to Cyprus, get thee hence:
Farewell, vain covetous fool, thou wilt repent
That for the love of dross thou hast despised

Wisdom's divine embrace; she would have borne thee
On the rich wings of immortality;

But now go dwell with cares, and quickly die.

The Best English People.

[IT is remarkable how, in the course of the present century, the novel has been the principal reflector of manners-how the players have, to a great extent, foregone their function of being "the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time." It was not so when Fielding and Smollett held "the mirror up to nature" in the modern form of fiction, whilst Goldsmith and Sheridan took the more ancient dramatic method of dealing with humours and fashions. The stage has still its sparkling writers-England is perhaps richer in the laughing satire and fun of journalism than at any period; but the novel, especially in that cheap issue which finds its entrance to thousands of households, furnishes the chief material from which the future philosophical historian will learn what were our modes of thought and of living-our vices and our follies -our pretensions and our realities in the middle of the nineteenth century. The fashionable novel, as it was called, has had its day; writers have found out that they must deal with ". mankind," and not with coteries. Amongst

the most successful of all those who came after Charles Dickens-not as an imitator, but in a truly original vein, was William Makepeace Thackeray. His 'Vanity Fair," from which we extract a somewhat isolated portion, is a masterly production-the work of an acute observer-sound in principle, manly in its contempt of the miserable conventionalities that make our social life such a cold and barren thing for too many. Never was the absurd desire for display, which is the bane of so much real happiness, better exposed than in the writings of Mr Thackeray. He is the very antagonism of that heartless pretence to exclusiveness and gentility which acquired for its advocates and its expositors the name of "the silver-fork school." Such authors as this produce incalculable benefit, and will do much to bring us back to that old English simplicity-the parent of real taste and refinement-which sees nothing truly to be ashamed of but profligacy and meanness. Thackeray was born at Calcutta in 1811. He died Dec. 24, 1863.

His serial, "The History of Pendennis," was begun in 1848. "The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., written by himself," was published in 1852. "The Newcomes" in 1855. The Virginians" was finished in 1859. His "Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World" was his last great novel. At the time of his death he was proceeding with another in the "Cornhill Magazine," which promised to have a new interest in its sketches of the smuggling traffic that was carried on in the days of high duties and protection.]

Before long, Beckey received not only "the best" foreigners, (as the phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang,) but some of the best English people too. I don't mean the most virtuous, or indeed the least virtuous, or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or the richest, or the best born, but "the best,"-in a word, people about whom there is no question, such as the great Lady Fitz-Willis, that patron saint of Almack's, the great Lady Slowbore, the great Lady Grizzel Macbeth, (she was Lady G. Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey of Glowry,) and the like. When the Countess of Fitz-Willis (her ladyship is of the King Street family, see Debrett and Burke) takes up a person, he or she is safe. There is no question about them any more. Not that my Lady Fitz-Willis is any better than anybody else, being, on the contrary, a faded person, fifty-seven years of age, and neither handsome, nor wealthy, nor entertaining; but it is agreed on all sides that she is of the "best people." Those who go to her are of the best; and from an old grudge, probably to Lady Steyne, (for whose coronet her ladyship, then the youthful Georgina