And fear of change at home, that drove him

hence.

James. That was the last drop in the cup of

gall.

I once was near him, when his bailiff brought
A Chartist pike. You should have seen him wince
As from a venomous thing: he thought himself
A mark for all, and shudder'd, lest a cry

Should break his sleep by night, and his nice

eyes

Should see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbs
Sweat on his blazon'd chairs; but, sir, you know
That these two parties still divide the world-
Of those that want, and those that have: and
still

The same old sore breaks out from age to age
With much the same result. Now I myself,
A Tory to the quick, was as a boy

Destructive, when I had not what I would.
I was at school-a college in the South:

There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit, His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us; We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She, With meditative grunts of much content,

Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.
By night we dragg'd her to the college tower
From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair
With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,
And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.
Large range of prospect had the mother sow,
And but for daily loss of one she loved

As one by one we took them-but for this-
As never sow was higher in this world—

Might have been happy: but what lot is pure?
We took them all, till she was left alone
Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,

And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty.

John. They found you out?

James.

John.

Not they.

Well-after all-

What know we of the secret of a man?

His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are

sound,

That we should mimic this raw fool the world,
Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,

As ruthless as a baby with a worm,
As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows
To Pity-more from ignorance than will.

But put your best foot forward, or I fear That we shall miss the mail: and here it comes With five at top: as quaint a four-in-hand

As

you shall see-three pyebalds and a roan.

EDWIN MORRIS;

OR, THE LAKE.

O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake,
My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of a year,
My one Oasis in the dust and drouth

Of city life! I was a sketcher then :

See here, my doing: curves of mountain, bridge, Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built

When men knew how to build, upon a rock

With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock:

And here, new-comers in an ancient hold,
New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires,
Here lived the Hills-a Tudor-chimnied bulk
Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.
O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake

EDWIN MORRIS; OR, THE LAKE. 61

With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull

The curate; he was fatter than his cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names, Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern, Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks, Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim, Who read me rhymes elaborately good,

His own—I call'd him Crichton, for he seem'd All-perfect, finish'd to the finger nail.

And once I ask'd him of his early life,
And his first passion; and he answer'd me;
And well his words became him: was he not
A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence

Stored from all flowers? Poet-like he spoke.

'My love for Nature is as old as I ;

But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that,

And three rich sennights more, my love for her.