A NEW CONSTELLATION : THE APOTHEOSIS OF " THE TAIL."
SINCE Mr. O'CONNELL disappeared from the House of Commons, " the Tail" has disappeared even from the newspapers. You may turn over a file of Times, Chronicle, or Post, for six months back, and it is odds that the name does not occur once even in the Irish correspondence. Sic transit! But as Berenice's Hair, when it disappeared from the altar, was recognized amid the constellations, so "the Tail," which has vanished from the columns of the jour- nals and died out of the mouths of men, has reappeared in the firmament. Sir Jour; HERSCHELL saw it last Friday night, and, naturally enough, mistook its switchy honours for a comet. There can be no doubt of it : for the supposed comet has no head or nucleus visible ; and though "the Tail" has evaporated, Mr. O'Cosi- NELL still walks this lower earth like a Sampson d posteriori, shorn of his bushy appendage. " The Tail," its earthly functions fulfilled, has taken up its place amid the worthies who preceded it,—Canis Major and Canis Minor, with tails of their own ; Taurus, who will gladly welcome the jolly company who could make bulls " though themselves were none "; the good ship Argo, which sailed in quest of the golden fleece, the rid of those times ; and the locks of Be- renice aforesaid. The apotheosis of the Tail has been performed with all the honours, and very appropriately just about St. Patrick's Day. The Earth, as in duty bound, shook in various places at this addition to the mythological body ; even steady Lancashire gave a shudder, to intimate that there was the soil where the next Avatar of Agitation was taking place. The weather has all of a sudden become genial, owing to the juxtaposition of so much hot Irish blood with the Sun ; and the almond-blossoms blush beauteously beneath the new celestial influence. Whoever turns his eyes soon after sunset to the West in a clear evening, will discover " the Tail," extinct upon earth, laid up in the lumber- garret of the skies, in shape not unlike some old pedagogue's birchen rod ; still, from the heavenly mansions, hieroglyphically presaging punishment to all foes of the Green Isle.
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