THEIE LOTE OF DISPLAY.

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Halltilifr

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hear from the native Rliinelanders how a Prussian Captain,ambitious of treating his brother-officers, will, in Ins mostextravagant moments, call for a bottle of Champagne andeighteen glasses. There is, in fact, a violent feud for everraging between the Rhinelanders and the balf-foreign Preussen;—under the latter head being included the civil and militarygovernment ofricers, and the police agents, who mostly comefrom Brandenburg, and are regarded as interlopers by thoseborn and bred in the Rhenish provinces.

Of course poverty is no disgrace, though it assuredlybecomes more laughable than pitiable when it starves itselffor the mere sake of dressing up in the costume of the rieh;and tliis these same " Hunger-leute" love to do to a most comicextent. Again, foppery—-especially when combined withfrippery—is at all times more absurd than imposing. "Forshame!" said Charlemagne (the story runs), to one of thecourt popinjays of the eighth Century; " dress yourself like arational creature; and if you would be distinguished, let it beby your merits and not by your garments."

The love of display, however, is the one great social maniaraging throughout all "polite society." No human facultyhas of late years been so fully developed as the desire foradmiration, and the consequence is, a positive furor for praisehas settled upon the higher and middle classes of every civilisedCommunity. But the misery is, that while the desire to obtainadmiration has been considerably intensified, by all manner ofsocial training, the capacity of appreciating what is reallyadmirable has been utterly uneducated, so that the publicvanity is directed only to the Iowest forms of excellence—such as dress and wealth; while the more intrinsic graces ofa chivalrous nature are regarded as barbaric virtues, and evenhonour and moral dignity thought to be far less enviablopossessions than a carriage or an estate.