Public Bouses.

Who starves his own; who persecutes the blood
He gave them in his children's veins, and hates
And wrongs the woman, he has sworn to love!

Pass where we may, through city or through town, Village, or hamlet, of this merry land,

Though lean and beggared, every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of stale debauch, forth-issuing from the styes,
The law has licensed, as makes temperance reel.
There sit, involved and lost in curling clouds
Of Indian fume, and guzzling deep, the boor,
The lackey, and the groom: the craftsman there
Takes a Lethean leave of all his toil;

Smith, cobler, joiner, he that plies the shears,
And he that kneads the dough; all loud alike,
All learned, and all drunk! The fiddle screams
Plaintive and piteous, as it wept and wailed
Its wasted tones and harmony unheard:

Fierce the dispute whate'er the theme; while she,
Fell Discord, arbitress of such debate,

VOL II.

Public Houses.

Perched on the sign-post, holds with even hand
Her undecisive scales. In this she lays
A weight of ignorance; in that of pride;
And smiles delighted with the eternal poise.
Dire is the frequent curse, and its twin sound
The cheek distending oath, not to be praised
As ornamental, musical, polite,

Like those which modern senators employ,

Whose oath is rhetoric, and who swear for fame!
Behold the schools, in which plebeian minds
Once simple are initiated in arts,

Which some may practise with politer grace,
But none with readier skill!-'tis here they learn
The road that leads from competence and peace
To indigence and rapine; till at last
Society, grown weary of the load

Shakes her incumbered lap, and casts them out.
But censure profits little: vain the attempt
To advertise in verse a public pest,

That, like the filth with which the peasant feeds

The multitude of them censured.

His hungry acres, stinks and is of use.
The excise is fattened with the rich result
Of all this riot; and ten thousand casks,
For ever dribbling out their base contents,
Touched by the Midas finger of the state,
Bleed gold for ministers to sport away.

Drink, and be mad then; 'tis your country bids!
Gloriously drunk obey the important call!

Her cause demands the assistance of your throats;—
Ye all can swallow, and she asks no more.

Would I had fallen upon those happier days,

That poets celebrate; those golden times,
And those Arcadian scenes, that Maro sings,
And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.

Nymphs were Dianas then, and swains had hearts,
That felt their virtues: innocence, it seems,

From courts dismissed, found shelter in the groves; The footsteps of simplicity, impressed

Upon the yielding herbage, (so they sing)

Then were not all effaced: then speech profane,

The simplicity of Country Manners almost lost.

Indebted to some smart wig-weaver's hand
For more than half the tresses it sustains;
Her elbows ruffled, and her tottering form
Ill propped upon French heels; she might be deemed
(But that the basket dangling on her arm
Interprets her more truly) of a rank

Too proud for dairy work, or sale of eggs,
Expect her soon with foot-boy at her heels,
No longer blushing for her awkward load,
Her train and her umbrella all her care!

The town has tinged the country; and the stain Appears a spot upon a vestal's robe,

The worse for what it soils. The fashion runs
Down into scenes still rural; but alas,

Seenes rarely graced with rural manners now!
Time was when in the pastoral retreat

The unguarded door, was safe; men did not watch
To invade another's right, or guard their own.
Then sleep was undisturbed by fear, unscared
By drunken howlings; and the chilling tale