We are happily not called upon to institute a comparison of character between the two distinguished moralists, though the same, drawn masterly, might not be devoid of entertainment and instruction.  But two or three other points of distinction should be kept in mind as having sensible relation to the question of competency to bear witness.  Byron wrote of the women of a corrupted court; Thackeray of the women of that society indicated by the phrase “Persons whom one meets”—­and meets now.  Byron wrote of an obsolete dance, described by Irving in terms of decided strength; Thackeray wrote of our own waltz.  In turning off his brilliant and witty verses it is unlikely that any care as to their truthfulness disturbed the glassy copiousness of the Byronic utterance; this child of nature did never consider too curiously of justice, moderation and such inventions of the schools.  The key-note of all the other wrote is given by his faithful pen when it avers that it never “signed the page that registered a lie.”  Byron was a “gentleman of wit and pleasure about town”; Thackeray the father of daughters.  However, all this is perhaps little to the purpose.  We owe no trifling debt to Lord Byron for his sparkling and spirited lines, and by no good dancer would they be “willingly let die.”  Poetry, music, dancing—­they are one art.  The muses are sisters, yet they do not quarrel.  Of a truth, even as was Laura, so every brisk and innocent young girl should be.  And it is safe to predict that she will be.  If she would enjoy the advantage of belonging to Our Set she must be.

As a rule, the ideas of the folk who cherish a prejudice against dancing are crude rather than unclean—­the outcome much more of ignorance than salacity.  Of course there are exceptions.  In my great work on The Prude all will be attended to with due discrimination in apportionment of censure.  At present the spirit of the dance makes merry with my pen, for from yonder “stately pleasure-dome” (decreed by one Kubla Khan, formerly of The Big Bonanza Mining Company) the strains of the Blue Danube float out upon the night.  Avaunt, miscreants! lest we chase ye with flying feet and do our little dance upon your unwholesome carcasses.  Already the toes of our partners begin to twiddle beneath their petticoats.  Come, then, Stoopid—­can’t you move?  No!—­they change it to a galop—­and eke the good old Sturm.  Firm and steady, now, fair partner mine, whiles we run that gobemouche down and trample him miserably.  There:  light and softly again—­the servants will remove the remains.

And hark! that witching strain once more: 

[Illustration:  Music tablature]

EPIGRAMS

If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.

To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil, and to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of interrogation.