"To whom no harlot comes amiss, "Save her of Babylon ;'

"And when we're at a loss for words,

"If laughing reasoners flout us,

"For lack of sense we'll draw our swords"The sole thing sharp about us.""Dear bold dragoon," the bishop said, ""Tis true for war thou art meant ; "And reasoning-bless that dandy head! "Is not in thy department. "So leave the argument to me"And, when my holy labor "Hath lit the fires of bigotry, "Thou'lt poke them with thy sabre. "From pulpit and from sentry-box, "We'll make our joint attacks, "I at the head of my Cassocks,

"And you of your Cossacks.

"So here's your health, my brave hussar,

"My exquisite old fighter"Success to bigotry and war,

"The musket and the mitre !" Thus pray'd the minister of heaven

While Y-k, just entering then,

Snored out, (as if some Clerk had given
His nose the cue,) "Amen."

Some settle your stomach, but this-bless your heart!

It will settle, forever, your Catholic Question.

Unlike, too, the potions in fashion at present,

This Wellington nostrum, restoring by stealth, So purges the mem'ry of all that's unpleasant, That patients forget themselves into rude health.

For instance, th' inventor-his having once said "He should think himself mad, if, at any one's call,

"He became what he is"-is so purged from his head,

That he now doesn't think he's a madman at all.

Of course, for your mem'ries of very long standing

Old chronic diseases, that date back, undaunted, To Brian Boroo and Fitz-Stephens' first landingA dev❜l of a dose of the Lethe is wanted.

But ev'n Irish patients can hardly regret

An oblivion, so much in their own native style, So conveniently plann'd, that, whate'er they forget, They may go on rememb'ring it still, all the while !2

1834.

THE WELLINGTON SPA.

T. B.

"And drink oblivion to our woes."-ANNA MATILDA.

1829.

TALK no more of your Cheltenham and Harrowgate springs,

"Tis from Lethe we now our potations must draw; Your Lethe's a cure for-all possible things,

And the doctors have named it the Wellington Spa.

Other physical waters but cure you in part;

A CHARACTER.

HALF Whig, half Tory, like those midway things,
"Twixt bird and beast, that by mistake have wings;
A mongrel Statesman, 'twixt two factions nursed,
Who, of the faults of each, combines the worst-
The Tory's loftiness, the Whigling's sneer,
The leveller's rashness, and the bigot's fear;
The thirst for meddling, restless still to show
How Freedom's clock, repair'd by Whigs, will go;
Th' alarm when others, more sincere than they,
Advance the hands to the true time of day.

By Mother Church, high-fed and haughty dame,
The boy was dandled, in his dawn of fame;
List'ning, she smiled, and bless'd the flippant
tongue

On which the fate of unborn tithe-pigs hung.
Ah, who shall paint the grandam's grim dismay,
When loose Reform enticed her boy away;

1 Cui nulla meretrix displicuit præter Babylonicam.

And, in Old Sarum's fate, foredoom her own!

Groaning she cried, while tears roll'd down her

cheeks,

"Poor, glib-tongued youth, he means not what he speaks.

"Like oil at top, these Whig professions flow, "But, pure as lymph, runs Toryism below. "Alas, that tongue should start thus, in the race, "Ere mind can reach and regulate its pace!"For, once outstripp'd by tongue, poor, lagging mind,

"At every step, still further limps behind.

"But, bless the boy!-whate'er his wandering be, "Still turns his heart to Toryism and me.

"Like those odd shapes, portray'd in Dante's lay,' "With heads fix'd on, the wrong and backward way,

"His feet and eyes pursue a diverse track,

But whither now, mix'd brood of modern light
And ancient darkness, canst thou bend thy flight?
Tried by both factions, and to neither true,
Fear'd by the old school, laugh'd at by the new;
For this too feeble, and for that too rash,
This wanting more of fire, that less of flash;
Lone shalt thou stand, in isolation cold,
Betwixt two worlds, the new one and the old,
A small and "vex'd Bermoothes," which the eye
Of venturous seaman sees-and passes by.

And never, till now, a movement made
That wasn't most manfully retrograde!
Only think-to sweep from the light of day
Mayors, maces, criers, and wigs away;
To annihilate-never to rise again-
A whole generation of aldermen,
Nor leave them ev'n th' accustom'd tolls,
To keep together their bodies and souls!--
At a time, too, when snug posts and places
Are falling away from us one by one,
Crash-crash-like the mummy-cases
Belzoni, in Egypt, sat upon,
Wherein lay pickled, in state sublime,
Conservatives of the ancient time;-
To choose such a moment to overset
The few snug nuisances left us yet;
To add to the ruin that round us reigns,
By knocking out mayors' and town-clerks' brains;
By dooming &. corporate bodies to fall,
Till they leave, at last, no bodies at all-
Naught but the ghosts of by-gone glory,
Wrecks of a world that once was Tory!
Where pensive criers, like owls unblest,

Robb'd of their roosts, shall still hoot o'er them! Nor mayors shall know where to seek a nest,

Till Gally Knight shall find one for them ;-
Till mayors and kings, with none to rue 'em,
Shall perish all in one common plague;
And the sovereigns of Belfast and Tuam

Must join their brother, Charles Dix, at Prague.

Thus mused I, in my chair, alone,
(As above described,) till dozy grown,
And nodding assent to my own opinions,
I found myself borne to sleep's dominions,
Where, lo, before my dreaming eyes,
A new House of Commons appear'd to rise,
Whose living contents, to fancy's survey,
Seem'd to me all turn'd topsy-turvy-
A jumble of polypi-nobody knew
Which was the head or which the queue.
Here, Inglis, turn'd to a sans-culotte,

Was dancing the hays with Hume and Grote;
There, ripe for riot, Recorder Shaw
Was learning from Roebuck "Ça-ira ;"

While Stanley and Graham, as poissarde wenches,
Scream'd" à bas !" from the Tory benches;
And Peel and O'Connell, cheek by jowl,
Were dancing an Irish carmagnole.

The Lord preserve us !—if dreams come true, What is this hapless realm to do?

1 A term formed on the model of the Mastodon, &c.

Lest the savantes and dandies should think this all fable,

Mr. Tomkins most kindly produced on the table,
A sample of each of these species of creatures,
Both tol'rably human, in structure and features,
Except that th' Episcopus seems, Lord deliver us!
To've been carnivorous as well as granivorous;
And Tomkins, on searching its stomach, found there
Large lumps, such as no modern stomach could bear,
Of a substance call'd Tithe, upon which, as 'tis said,
The whole Genus Clericum formerly fed;
And which having lately himself decompounded,
Just to see what 'twas made of, he actually found it
Composed of all possible cookable things
That e'er tripp'd upon trotters or soar'd upon
wings-

All products of earth, both gramineous, herbaceous,
Hordeaceous, fabaceous, and eke farinaceous,
All clubbing their quotas to glut the œsophagus
Of this ever greedy and grasping Tithophagus.
"Admire," exclaim'd Tomkins, "the kind dispensa-
tion

"By Providence shed on this much-favor'd nation, "In sweeping so ravenous a race from the earth, "That might else have occasion'd a general dearth

"And thus burying 'em, deep as even Joe Hune would sink 'em,

"With the Ichthyosaurus and Palæorynchum,

2 The zoological term for a tithe-eater.

"And other queer ci-devant things, under ground— "Not forgetting that fossilized youth,' so renown'd, "Who lived just to witness the Deluge-was gratified

"Much by the sight, and has since been found stratified!"

This picturesque touch-quite in Tomkins's way-
Call'd forth from the savantes a general hurrah;
While inquiries among them went rapidly round,
As to where this young stratified man could be
found.

SONGS OF THE CHURCH. No. 1.

LEAVE ME ALONE.

A PASTORAL BALLAD.

"We are ever standing on the defensive. All that we say to them is, leave us alone. The Established Church is part and parcel of the constitution of this country. You are bound to conform to this constitution. We ask of you nothing more; let us alone."-Letter in The Times, Nov. 1838.

flow'd on,

To sketch t'other wonder, th' Aristocratodon-
An animal, differing from most human creatures
No so much in speech, inward structure, or features,
As in having a certain excrescence, T. said,
Which in form of a coronet grew from its head,
And devolved to its heirs, when the creature was
dead;

Nor matter'd it, while this heir-loom was transmitted,

How unfit were the heads, so the coronet fitted.

He then mention'd a strange zoological fact,
Whose announcement appear'd much applause to

attract.

In France, said the learned professor, this race
Had so noxious become, in some centuries' space,
From their numbers and strength, that the land was
o'errun with 'em,

Every one's question being, "What's to be done with 'em?"

When, lo certain knowing ones-savans, mayhap, Who, like Buckland's deep followers, understood trap?

Slyly hinted that naught upon earth was so good,
For Aristocratodons, when rampant and rude,
As to stop, or curtail, their allowance of food.
This expedient was tried, and a proof it affords

Of th' effect that short commons will have upon lords;

For this whole race of bipeds, one fine summer's

morn,

Shed their coronets, just as a deer sheds his horn,
And the moment these gewgaws fell off, they became
Quite a new sort of creature-so harmless and tame,
That zoologists might, for the first time, maintain 'em
To be near akin to the genus humanum,
And th' experiment, tried so successfully then,
Should be kept in remembrance, when wanted again.

*

1 The man found by Scheuchzer, and supposed by him to have witnessed the Deluge, ("homo diluvii testis,") but who turned out, I am sorry to say, to be merely a great lizard.

In clover my shepherds I keep;
My stalls are all furnish'd with drones,
Whose preaching invites one to sleep.
At my spirit let infidels scoff,

So they leave but the substance my own;
For, in sooth, I'm extremely well off,
If the world will but let me alone.

1838.

And there's no saying when they'll have done;— Oh dear, how I wish Mr. Breeks

Had left Mrs. Woolfrey alone!

If any need pray for the dead,

"Tis those to whom post-obits fall; Since wisely hath Solomon said, "Tis "money that answereth all."

2 Particularly the formation called Transition Trap.

But ours be the patrons who live ;

For, once in their glebe they are thrown, The dead have no living to give,

And therefore we leave them alone.

Though in morals we may not excel,
Such perfection is rare to be had;
A good life is, of course, very well,

But good living is also-not bad.
And when, to feed earth-worms, I go,
Let this epitaph stare from my stone,
"Here lies the Right Rev. so and so;

"Pass, stranger, and-leave him alone."

EPISTLE FROM HENRY OF EX-T-R TO JOHN OF TUAM.

DEAR John, as I know, like our brother of London, You've sipp'd of all knowledge, both sacred and mundane,

No doubt, in some ancient Joe Miller, you've read What Cato, that cunning old Roman, once said— That he ne'er saw two rev'rend soothsayers meet, Let it be where it might, in the shrine or the street, Without wondering the rogues, 'mid their solemn grimaces,

Didn't burst out a laughing in each other's faces.'
What Cato then meant, though 'tis so long ago,
Even we in the present times pretty well know;
Having soothsayers also, who-sooth to say, John-
Are no better in some points than those of days gone,
And a pair of whom, meeting, (between you and me,)
Might laugh in their sleeves, too-all lawn though
they be.

But this, by the way-my intention being chiefly
In this, my first letter, to hint to you briefly,
That, seeing how fond you of Tuum3 must be,
While Meum's at all times the main point with me,
We

We scarce could do better than form an alliance,
To set these sad Anti-Church times at defiance:
You, John, recollect, being still to embark,
With no share in the firm but your title3 and mark;
Or ev'n should you feel in your grandeur inclined
To call yourself Pope, why, I shouldn't much mind;
While my church as usual holds fast by your Tuum,
And every one else's, to make it all Suum.

Thus allied, I've no doubt we shall nicely agree, As no twins can be liker, in most points, than we;

1 Mirari se,si augur augurem aspiciens sibi temperaret a risu. 2 So spelled in those ancient versicles which John, we understand, frequently chants :

"Had every one Suum,

You wouldn't have Tuum,

Both specimens choice of that mix'd sort of beast, (See Rev. xiii. 1.) a political priest;

Both mettlesome chargers, both brisk pamphleteers, Ripe and ready for all that sets men by the ears; And I, at least one, who would scorn to stick longer By any giv'n cause than I found it the stronger,: And who, smooth in my turnings as if on a swivel, When the tone ecclesiastic wo'n't do, try the civil.

In short (not to bore you, ev'n jure divino)
We've the same cause in common, John-all but
the rhino;

And that vulgar surplus, whate'er it may be,
As you're not used to cash, John, you'd best leave

to me.

And so, without form-as the postman wo'n't tarry

I'm, dear Jack of Tuam,

Yours,

EXETER HARRY.

SONG OF OLD PUCK.

"And those things do best please me, That befall preposterously."

PUCK Junior, Midsummer Night's Dream.

WHO wants old Puck? for here am I,
A mongrel imp, 'twixt earth and sky,
Ready alike to crawl or fly;
Now in the mud, now in the air,
And, so 'tis for mischief, reckless where.

As to my knowledge, there's no end to't,
For where I haven't it, I pretend to't;
And, 'stead of taking a learn'd degree
At some dull university,

Puck found it handier to commence
With a certain share of impudence,
Which passes one off as learn'd and clever,
Beyond all other degrees whatever;
And enables a man of lively sconce
To be Master of all the Arts at once.
No matter what the science may be-
Ethics, Physics, Theology,
Mathematics, Hydrostatics,
Aerostatics or Pneumatics-
Whatever it be, I take my luck,
"Tis all the same to ancient Puck;

But I should have Meum,

And sing Te Deum."

3 For his keeping the title he may quote classical authority, as Horace expressly says, "Poteris servare Tuam."De Art. Poet. v. 329.-Chronicle.