Almost as gay as that of morn-saluting lark.
Hark to that whistle from the tunnel-hark!
So shriek'd the tortured Jew in Popish dungeon dark a.

To think that I could mend the times,
I knew was very idle,
And therefore have I kept my tongue
As with a tighten'd bridle.

At length, if silent long, my mouth
Has given vent to hot vexation,
The curb-chain has been broken by
An accidental irritation.

When a fill'd kettle, or a pot,
Is very nearly boiling hot,
A little bit of flaming stick
Will cause it to boil o'er;
Effecting that which twenty sticks
Had fail'd to do before.

The angry heat within my breast
I find I cannot stifle;

And yet the cause that makes it blaze
May seem a very trifle.

"Tis the last feather breaks the horse's back." b
Tis not on Nero that the satirist,
But babbling Codrus, makes his first attack-
On paper-spoiling Codrus the first whack
Descends from Juvenal's sledge-hammer fist.
Disgusted with the vices of the age,

A pismire's bite first stung him into rage;
And then his honest indignation
Needed no further provocation,
Nor any Muse's inspiration.

a See Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," vol. i. p. 326, last three lines; third edition.

► A proverb.

And now the cause. Speak out the cause, my soul!
In wildness, yesterday, my eyes did roll-

Hamlet, so sad and moody in his ire,
Hamlet could jest! while yet his ghastly Sire
On empty stomach was be-purged a in fire!

I did not speak "the cause." -Grief stupifies,
Or bothers one.--Hear now, "for I will speak!"

Thus Brutus spoke. So I speak. Nor will seek
For fine set terms. I'll-only wipe my eyes-
Then say that Brace's death has caused my bile to rise.

Not Wordsworth's Widow'd Owl piped out "tee-whit," b
Or screech'd her wild "tu-whoo,"

From such an agoniz-ed heart as I
Raised up a "hub-bub-boo,"
When Brace was done to death.

Why should a rat have breath d?

And he! oh, if!-but Brace is stark and stiff!

Dear dog, 'tis vainly now one thinks of "why" and "if!"

Whether the gallant dog divined that I
The snorting monster held in enmity-
Or took the engine for a beast of prey-
(The first he ever saw 'twas yesterday,)
If to steam-engines he, a thorough stranger,
As this came roaring on, thought me in danger;
What prompted him, I cannot sing or say-

* He was condemned to fast in fire, till his foul deeds were burnt and purged away.

b Wordsworth having successfully poetized the owls that had "tuneful voices," bethought himself of the screechers; and said to himself, "Methinks me hears two voices!** Then he looked stedfastly at the moon, "and rapt, inspired," he presently produced his "Widow'd Owl." This little poem he recited to a few boardingschool girls who were breakfasting at an inn on their road home for the holidays. It was too pathetic, and he resolved never to publish it. The effect it produced was lamentable. The poor girls wept piteously, and at last almost expired in hysterics.

The younger one never recovered the proper use of her eyes, and died unmarried; the other two never dared to sleep alone, and were, very happily for them, married about two years afterwards. But Wordsworth always felt acutely for the poor purblind, bleary-eyed, ever-winking child, and never could be prevailed upon by any of his friends to publish this mel melancholy proof of his poetical powers.

"Hub-bub-boo." The Irish funeral howl.-(See Johnson's Dictionary, letter H. See also Tommy Moore's "Loves of the Tipperary Imps;" Vol. i., canto 1, line 1).

d King Lear asked the same question long ago.

But he show'd his white teeth, and he bristled his hair,
And flew at the monster ere I was aware!

Was smash'd upon the rail! Stone-dead!
As "dead as nail in door!" a Dead! dead
As mutton, bacon, herring! Would
That all the engineers had stood,

Where stood poor Brace! For a man's head
I little care; but when a heart

So smash'd is warm as Mrs. Case's,
Or Dick's, or as the gallant Brace's,
My milk of kindness turns so tart!
And then I feel so very wick-
Ed, that to the tallow-chandlers,
I could send these matter-handlers,
Or wish them melted by old Nick,
And sent to him at double-quick
A railroad pace. For I'm heart-sick,
When mournful fancies coming thick b,
Seem to present before me, Dick,
The loving face
Of gallant Brace.

He is gone he is gone!
Gone to his death-bed!
For he is gone dead !
And I am left alone

To rhyme, and make my moan.
So young! and I, so old, had hoped
His tongue would lick my face when dying;
And not to write his elegy,

With trembling hand, and eyes a-crying.

My bosom my heart will beat through!
Hub-bub-boo-hub, bub, bub-bub-bood!

a Second part of King Henry IV.

b Macbeth.

• Hamlet.

Pope sets before our eyes Camilla ascouring. If the author has not, to the

eye and ear of the reader, with equal felicity, presented sobs, he is neither conjuror nor poet. Let a first-rate tragic actor try his best at this line, and then

Boatswain! your master had a heart
As soft as red-hot iron;
You were beloved, and, lucky dog,
Immortalized by Byron.

Argus! you live, for Homer spake
Of you, when of Ulysses
He sung the wonderful escapes
From being food for fishes.

Great was your luck! For anté vos
Fortes vixère canés a;

Forgotten now, for want of one

To poetize their manés.

Si meum carmen potest quid b,
As long as live his betters o,
So Brace shall live. I'll bind these lines
With Peter Morris' Letters d.

The Lilliput giants, with Brace, will inherit
A modern eternity due to their merite.
May it last at least a wee-bit!
Quantum valeat valebit f.

a "Anté vos fortes vixère canés."(HORACE.) Before your times many excellent dogs have existed.

"Si meum carmen potest quid." (VIRGIL.) If my verses have sufficient value.

"His betters." The author here speaks of Boatswain, Lord Byron's Newfoundland dog; and of Argus, Ulysses' dog, of a breed unknown to us. He does not speak of Peter Morris's Edinburgh Nobs. (See next note.) Argus was as fast as a greyhound, was very tender nosed, was very savage; and, though very big, took cover like a terrier, and was equally good at goat, wolf, deer, bear, and hare.

Some years ago Peter Morris's letters were given to the author. He did not buy them. They pretend to make the public acquainted with the characters and talents of the knowing Greeks of modern Athens. But though Peter Morris has his skits at the religious, the irreligious, and the political opinions of several of them; of every one the intellectual powers are

belauded. He dared not, whatever other liberties he takes with them, scratch the vanity-place of any. By the way, Lord Brougham says that the modern Greeks do not now like to be so called. Certainly the name is an equivocal one to many ears, and the author begs their pardon; but he is too languid to re-write his note.

e To continue the duration of this eternity as long as possible, "Peter Morris's Letters" and "My Dog Brace " shall be bound up together; and if the requisite permission be not refused, the volumes will be deposited among the archives of the London University, Gower Street, North, London. A hundred thousand years hence, of what an enormous size will a biographical dictionary be, if great men continue to be produced as numerously as in our times! Will there be room for more than half a dozen lines for Homer, or for Alexander, or for Shakspeare?

NOTES IN ILLUSTRATION.

No. 1, (DEDICATION, p. iii.)

"When nations suffer from mental derangement."

OF "oracles, and fortune tellers," says Selden, "there sometimes is a season for them." So there is for the plague, for Pusey-ism, &c., &c., &c.

Hallam speaks of Bishop Butler's hypothesis of "the madness of a whole people." Lit. Hist. Europe, Vol. iii. p. 302.

Hallam calls the Gongora-ism of Spain a "disease." - Ibid. p. 472.

Louis Blanc, himself perhaps not quite sane, speaks of the republican mania for conspiracy at Paris-of the regicidal mania there and he might also have mentioned the suicidal mania; when genteelish boys and girls in love had a fancy for putting a bullet into each other's brains, drawing the triggers of their pistols with rose-coloured ribbons. Vanity run mad was the cause of this fashion. "Occuper le public de soi-l'espoir d'une pub"licité-c'est la maladie de notre siècle," says Gisquet. Why did these young folk thus operate on each other? They had previously drawn up an eloquent, pathetic, and sentimental account of their loves, their sufferings, and their heroic deaths, which was to appear in the next day's newspapers ! cette époque une sorte de vertige égarait les esprits." - GISQUET.

"A

In England, Exeter Hall is a great theatre for the absurdities of amateur performers; almost as mad, and quite as vain.

'Tis "a mad world, my masters !"

St. Simonianism was a French Pusey-ism. In France, sensualism: in England, religious cant. Each is characteristic: nationality well marked. "Instances are known in every large (lunatic) asylum, displaying a total " perversion of moral feelings, while the sense and intellect survive, nay, are "lively and astute: a fact which ought to convince us that illusions and "other palpable defects of the understanding, are not the most essential "and necessary concomitants of insanity." (Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor, 1844, see the Quart. Rev. of, vol. for 1845, p. 477.)

(Pusey and Newman, &c., are very astute. As to moral feelings, they appear to have lost the love of frankness, and the love of simple truth. They justify "reserve!" "Whatsoever is more than yea, yea; nay, nay; "cometh of evil.")

Even Maurice has allowed that the obliquity of Pusey-ite reasoning "is "the most glaring proof of a conscience either blinded by prejudice, or be"numbed by disease."