Hast. I am not read, Nor skill'd and practis'd in the arts of greatness, Think England's peace bought cheaply with my blood, THE ASTRONOMICAL ALDERMAN, Horace Smith. THE pedant or scholastikos became Of blunders made by other folks; Of old Hierocles can shew, Of Mr. Miller's, commonly called Joe. One of these turtle-eating men, Not much excelling In his spelling, When ridicule he meant to brave, Said he was more P than N, Meaning thereby more phool than nave; Though they who knew our cunning Thraso, Pronounc'd it flattery to say so. His civic brethren, to express His "double, double, toil and trouble," And bustling, noisy emptiness, Had christen'd him Sir Hubble Bubble. This wight ventripotent was dining Once at the Grocer's Hall, and lining That tomb omnivorous-his paunch, Inflicting many a horrid gash; When having swallow'd six or seven And he began, with mighty bonhommie, "Sir," he exclaimed between his bumpers, And all those chaps, have had their day; 66 But," quoth his neighbour, "when the sun How comes it that he shows his face Next morning in his former place?” "Ho! there's a pretty question, truly," 66 So much his triumph seem'd to please him, CRESCENTIUS.* Miss Landon. I LOOK'D upon his brow ;-no sign He stood as proud by that death-shrine He had a power; in his eye There was a quenchless energy, A spirit that could dare The deadliest form that Death could ke, And dare it for the daring's sake *Crescentius was Consul of Rome, A.D. 998. After having made a vigorous attempt to deliver his country from the tyranny of the Saxon emperors, he was induced to surrender, through a promise of safety, and was then most cruelly executed. He stood, the fetters on his hand,— And had that grasp been on the brand, With freer pride than it wav'd now; The rack, the chain, the axe, the wheel, I saw him once before; he rode And tens of thousands throng'd the road, His helm, his breastplate, were of gold, The sun shone on his sparkling mail, But now he stood; chain'd and alone, The plume, the helm, the charger, gone; The mightiest, lay broken near, Came from that lip of pride; And never king or conqueror's brow He bent beneath the headsman's stroke A wild shout from the numbers broke It was a people's loud acclaim, СНАТНАМ. Grattan. THE secretary stood alone; modern degeneracy had not reached him ; original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity; his august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great: but, overbearing, persuasive, and untractable, his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party;-without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished;-always seasonable, always adequate; the suggestions of an understanding, animated by ardour and enlightened by prophecy. The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent were unknown to him; no domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and to decide. A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age; and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt, through all the classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her. Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments, and instructive wisdom: not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully, it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he, like Townsend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe. THE BULL FIGHT. HUSH'D is the din of tongues; on gallant steeds, And lowly bending to the lists advance: Rich are their scarfs, their chargers featly prance. The crowd's loud shout and ladies' lovely glance, And all that kings or chiefs e'er gain, their toils repay. In costly sheen and gaudy cloak arrayed, The lord of lowing herds; but not before Can man achieve without the friendly steed,— Thrice sounds the clarion-lo! the signal falls, Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit His angry tail red rolls his eye's dilated glow. : Sudden he stops ;-his eye is fixed;—away, The skill that yet may check his mad career. Again he comes; nor dart nor lance avail, Nor the wild plunging of the tortured horse: Hs gory chest unveils life's panting source: Though death-struck, still his feeble frame he rears; Staggering, but stemming all, his lord unarm'd he bears. Foiled, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last, Full in the centre stands the bull at bay, 'Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast, And foes disabled in the brutal fray. And now the matadores around him play, Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand. Once more through all he bursts his thundering way: Vain rage! the mantle quits the conynge hand, Wraps his fierce eye,-'tis past,―he sinks upon the sand! Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine, |