but blanks, or those more vexatious tantalizers of the spirit denominated small prizes, yet do I hold myself largely indebted to this most generous diffuser of universal happiness.  Ingrates that we are, are we to be thankful for no benefits that are not palpable to sense, to recognize no favors that are not of marketable value, to acknowledge no wealth unless it can be counted with the five fingers?  If we admit the mind to be the sole depositary of genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not been elevated into a temporary Elysium by the magic of the Lottery?  Which of us has not converted his ticket, or even his sixteenth share of one, into a nest-egg of Hope, upon which he has sat brooding in the secret roosting-places of his heart, and hatched it into a thousand fantastical apparitions?

What a startling revelation of the passions, if all the aspirations engendered by the Lottery could be made manifest!  Many an impecuniary epicure has gloated over his locked-up warrant for future wealth, as a means of realizing the dream of his namesake in the “Alchemist":—­

    “My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,—­
    Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded
    With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies;
    The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels’ heels,
    Boiled i’ the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl
    (Apicius’ diet ’gainst the epilepsy);
    And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber
    Headed with diamant and carbuncle. 
    My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons,
    Knots, goodwits, lampreys.  I myself will have
    The beards of barbels served; instead of salads,
    Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps
    Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
    Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce,
    For which I’ll say unto my cook, ’There’s gold: 
    Go forth, and he a knight.’”

Many a doting lover has kissed the scrap of paper whose promissory shower of gold was to give up to him his otherwise unattainable Danae; Nimrods have transformed the same narrow symbol into a saddle by which they have been enabled to bestride the backs of peerless hunters; while nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean form into

    “Rings, gauds, conceits,
    Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats,”

and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the obsequious husband, the two-footmaned carriage, and the opera-box.  By the simple charm of this numbered and printed rag, gamesters have, for a time at least, recovered their losses, spendthrifts have cleared off mortgages from their estates, the imprisoned debtor has leaped over his lofty boundary of circumscription and restraint and revelled in all the joys of liberty and fortune, the cottage-walls have swelled out into more goodly proportion than those of Baucis and Philemon, poverty has tasted the luxuries of competence, labor has lolled at ease in a perpetual armchair of idleness,