The tender love-bird-or the filial stork?

The punctual crane-the providential raven? The pelican whose bosom feeds her young?

Nay, must we cut from Saturday till Monday That feather'd marvel with a human tongue, Because she does not preach upon a SundayBut what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

The busy beaver-that sagacious beast!
The sheep that owned an Oriental Shepherd-
That desert-ship the camel of the East,

The horn'd rhinoceros-the spotted leopard-
The creatures of the Great Creator's hand

Are surely sights for better days than MondayThe elephant, although he wears no band, Has he no sermon in his trunk for SundayBut what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What harm if men who burn the midnight-oil,
Weary of frame, and worn and wan in feature,
Seek once a week their spirits to assoil,

And snatch a glimpse of "Animated Nature?"
Better it were if, in his best of suits,

The artisan, who goes to work on Monday, Should spend a leisure hour amongst the brutes, Than make a beast of his own self on SundayBut what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Why, zounds! what raised so Protestant a fuss
(Omit the zounds! for which I make apology)
But that the Papists, like some fellows, thus

Had somehow mixed up Dens with their theology? Is Brahma's bull-a Iindoo god at home

A papal bull to be tied up till Monday

Or Leo, like his namesake, Pope of Rome,

That there is such a dread of them on Sunday-
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Spirit of Kant! have we not had enough

To make religion sad, and sour, and snubbish, But saints zoological must cant their stuff,

As vessels cant their ballast-rattling rubbish!
Once let the sect, triumphant to their text,
Shut Nero1 up from Saturday till Monday,
And sure as fate they will deny us next
To see the dandelions on a Sunday-

But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy

NOTE. There is an anecdote of a Scotch Professor who hap pened during a Sunday walk to be hammering at a geological specimen which he had picked up, when a peasant gravely accosted him, and said, very seriously, "Eh! Sir, you think you are only breaking a stone, but you are breaking the Sabbath.'

In a similar spirit, some of our over-righteous sectarians are fond of attributing all breakage to the same cause-from the smashing of a parish lamp, up to the fracture of a human skull ;-the "breaking into the bloody house of life," or the breaking into a brickbuilt dwelling. They all originate in the breaking of the Sabbath. It is the source of every crime in the country-the parent of every illegitimate child in the parish. The picking of a pocket is ascribed to the picking of a daisy-the robbery on the highway to a stroll in the fields the incendiary fire to a hot dinner-on Sunday. All other causes-the want of education-the want of moral culturethe want of bread itself, are totally repudiated. The criminal himself is made to confess at the gallows that he owes his appearance on the scaffold to a walk with "Sally in our alley" on the "day that comes between a Saturday and Monday.'

Supposing this theory to be correct, and made like the law "for every degree," the wonder of Captain Macheath that we haven't "better company at Tyburn tree (now the New Drop) must be fully shared by everybody who has visited the Ring in Hyde Park on the day in question. But how much greater must be the wonder of any person who has happened to reside, like myself, for a year or two in a continental city, inhabited, according to the strict construction of our Mawworms, by some fifteen or twenty thousand of habitual Sabbath-breakers, and yet, without hearing of murder and robbery as often as of blood-sausages and dollars! A city where the Burgomaster himself must have come to a bad end, if a dance upon Sunday led so inevitably to a dance upon nothing!

The "saints" having set up this absolute dependence of crime on Sabbath-breaking, their relative proportions become a fair statisti cal question; and, as such, the inquiry is seriously recommended to the rigid legislator, who acknowledges, indeed, that the Sabbath was "made for man," but, by a singular interpretation, conceives that the man for whom it was made is himself!

I The name of a well-known lion at that time in the Zoological Gardens.

THE TURTLES.

A FABLE.

"The rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle."- BYRON.

NE day, it was before a civic dinner,

A Zoey's

drown net

алд ми

Two London Aldermen, no matter which, mofitaber

Cordwainer, Girdler, Patten-maker, Skinner

But both were florid, corpulent, and rich, fable.

And both right fond of festive demolition,
Set forth upon a secret expedition.
Yet not, as might be fancied from the token,
To Pudding Lane, Pie Corner, or the Street
Of Bread, or Grub, or anything to eat,
Or drink, as Milk, or Vintry, or Portsoken,
But eastward to that more aquatic quarter,
Where folks take water,

Or bound on voyages, secure a berth
For Antwerp or Ostend, Dundee or Perth,
Calais, Boulogne, or any Port on earth!

Jostled and jostling, through the mud,
Peculiar to the Town of Lud,

Down narrow streets and crooked lanes they dived,
Past many a gusty avenue, through which

Came yellow fog, and smell of pitch,

From barge, and boat, and dusky wharf derived;

The wly live. that losh

good

page 40. Read them

and let the

With darker fumes, brought eddying by the draught,

From loco-smoko-motive craft;

Mingling with scents of butter, cheese, and gammons,
Tea, coffee, sugar, pickles, rosin, wax,

Hides, tallow, Russia-matting, hemp and flax,
Salt-cod, red-herrings, sprats, and kipper'd salmons,
Nuts, oranges, and lemons,

Each pungent spice, and aromatic gum,

Gas, pepper, soaplees, brandy, gin, and rum ;

Alamode-beef and greens-the London soil

Glue, coal, tobacco, turpentine and oil,

Bark, assafoetida, squills, vitriol, hops,

In short, all whiffs, and sniffs, and pufts and snuffs,
From metals, minerals, and dyewood stuffs,
Fruits, victual, drink, solidities, or slops-

rest slide

In flasks, casks, bales, trucks, waggons, taverns, shops, Boats, lighters, cellars, wharfs, and warehouse-tops, That, as we walk upon the river's ridge,

Assault the nose--below the bridge.

A walk, however, as tradition tells,
That once a poor blind Tobit used to choose,
Because, incapable of other views,

He met with "such a sight of smells."

But on, and on, and on,

In spite of all unsavoury shocks,

Progress the stout Sir Peter and Sir John,
Steadily steering ship-like for the docks-

And now they reach a place the Muse, unwilling,
Recalls for female slang and vulgar doing,

The famous Gate of Billing,

That does not lead to cooing

And now they pass that House that is so ugly
A Customer to people looking "smuggley "-
And now along that fatal Hill they pass
Where centuries ago an Oxford bled,
And proved-too late to save his life, alas !—
That he was "off his head."

At last before a lofty brick-built pile

Sir Peter stopp'd, and with mysterious smile
Tingled a bell that served to bring
The wire-drawn genius of the ring,
A species of commercial Samuel Weller-
To whom Sir Peter-tipping him a wink,
And something else to drink-
"Show us the cellar."

Obsequious bow'd the man, and led the way
Down sundry flights of stairs, where windows small,
Dappled with mud, let in a dingy ray—

A dirty tax, if they were tax'd at all.

At length they came into a cellar damp,
With venerable cobwebs fringed around,

A cellar of that stamp

Which often harbours vintages renown'd,

The feudal Hock, or Burgundy the courtly,
With sherry, brown or golden,

Or port, so olden,

Bereft of body 'tis no longer portly

But old or otherwise--to be veracious—

That cobwebb'd cellar, damp, and dim, and spacious,
He'd nothing crusty-but crustaceous.

Prone, on the chilly floor,

Five splendid Turtles-such a five!

Natives of some West Indian shore,
Were flapping all alive,

Late landed from the Jolly Planter's yawl-
A sight whereon the dignitaries fix'd
Their eager eyes, with ecstacy unmix'd,
Like fathers that behold their infants crawl,
Enjoying every little kick and sprawl.
Nay-far from fatherly the thoughts they bred
Poor loggerheads from far Ascension ferried!
The Aldermen too plainly wish'd them dead
And Aldermanbury'd!

"There!" cried Sir Peter, with an air Triumphant as an ancient victor's,

And pointing to the creatures rich and rare,

"There's picters!"

"Talk of Olympic Games! They're not worth mention;

The real prize for wrestling is when Jack,

In Providence or Ascension,

Can throw a lively turtle on its back!”

"Aye!" cried Sir John, and with a score of nods,

Thoughtful of classical symposium,

"There's food for Gods!

There's nectar! there's ambrosium !

There's food for Roman Emperors to cat

Oh, there had been a treat