Metropolitan.

    [11] The Santa Casa.

* * * * *

ASMODEUS IN LONDON.

(From the New Monthly Magazine.)

I was alone with Sleep.

* * * * *

I woke with a singular sense of feebleness and exhaustion, and turning my dizzy eyes—–­beheld the walls and furniture of my own chamber in London.  Asmodeus was seated by my side reading a Sunday newspaper—­his favourite reading.

“Ah!” said I, stretching myself with so great an earnestness, that I believed at first my stature had been increased by the malice of the Wizard, and that I stretched from one end of the room to the other—­“Ah! dear Asmodeus, how pleasant it is to find myself on earth again!  After all, these romantic wonders only do for a short time.  Nothing like London when one has been absent from it upon a Syntax search after the Picturesque!”

“London is indeed a charming place,”—­said the Devil—­“all our fraternity are very fond of it—­it is the custom for the Parisians to call it dull.  What an instance of the vanity of patriotism—­there is vice enough in it to make any reasonable man cheerful.”

“Yes:  the gaiety of Paris is really a delusion.  How poor its shops—­how paltry its equipages—­how listless its crowds—­compared with those of London!  If it was only for the pain in walking their accursed stones, sloping down to a river in the middle of the street—­all sense of idle enjoyment would be spoilt.  But in London—­’the hum, the stir, the din of men’—­the activity and flush of life everywhere—­the brilliant shops—­the various equipages—­the signs of luxury, wealth, restlessness, that meet you on all sides—­give a much more healthful and vigorous bound to the spirits, than the indolent loungers of the Tuileries, spelling a thrice-read French paper which contains nothing, or sitting on chairs by the hour together, unwilling to stir because they have paid a penny for the seat—­ever enjoy.  O! if London would seem gay after Paris, how much more so after a visit to the interior of the Earth.  And what is the news, my Asmodeus?”

“The Theatres have re-opened.  Apropos of them—­I will tell you a fine instance of the futility of human ambition.  Mr. Monck Mason took the King’s Theatre, saith report—­(which is the creed of devils)—­in order to bring out an opera of his own, which Mr. Laporte, with a very uncourteous discretion, had thought fit to refuse.  The season passes—­and Mr. Monck Mason has ruined himself without being able to bring out his opera after all!  What a type of speculation.  A speculator is one who puts a needle in a hay-stack, and then burns all his hay without finding the needle.  It is hard to pay too dear for one’s whistle—­but still more hard if one never plays a tune on the whistle one pays for.  Still the world has lost a grand pleasure in not seeing damned an Opera written by