DISMAL REJOICINGS.
No poetaster is so absurd and extravagant as your matter-of-fact man when he trespasses into the regions of imagination; and in like manner when dry technical formality assumes the office of spontaneous feeling, it plays such pranks as put the utmost exu- berance of untutored passion to shame. Etiquette supplies substi- tutes for emotion; but that dull contractor in feeling makes dreary blunders. A dance at your "grand ball" is executed with a grave anxiety as if the life of the victim depended on a due per- formance of the figure. Ostentatious hospitality gives to a funeral the air of a feast—indeed sometimes much more than the air. Official emotion on public occasions is equally undiscrimin- ating. We have just won a victory in India, of such sort that many more would annihilate our army : but it was technically a victory, and guns were fired in Tower and Park, at the extra- ordinary hour of ten on Monday. night. The Times tells us that many loyal folks supposed the salutes to announce "another joy- ful event"—meaning a premature Royal birth! But it is quite according to rule thus to take the mournful for the joyful. Having manufactured the joy, what a monstrous way of ex- pressing it is this firing of guns! An illumination, indeed, is in accord with hilarity, because light itself is gay ; flags are pretty to look at ; bells would be joyful if they were always in tune and well harmonized: but what is there joyful in the dull sound of great guns—like a chest of drawers filling in the room over- head ? How "hard up" must official joy be for genuine coin of expression, when it must fly to chemistry for its large utter- ance "—rushes to the powder-magazine for that villanous com- pound which you may buy at several places from the wholesale dealer's to the chandler's shop, sets a match to the grains, and makes a great burst of noise! It is rather curious that this par- ticular kind, of drug should be selected, when we remember the other uses to which it is put : it is used to kill people withal, just as it was used to destroy those whose lives purchased this very " victory" ; it serves to make 'known the distress of drowning mariners at sea. But these reflections will not disturb the cus- toms of any loyal folks, whether great officials or little black- guard boys, celebrating bloody battles, the collection of pence on the Fifth of November, or any other " joyful " events.
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