Consider my case in the light it deserves So thus they brushed off, each his cane at his nose, Having turned out the doctors, the whole party improve both in health and spirits; Miss Jenny picks up a military lover, under whose auspices Simkin turns beau : No city, dear mother, this city excels In charming sweet sounds both of fiddles and bells, I thought, like a fool, that they only would ring For a wedding, or judge, or the birth of a king; But I found 'twas for me that the good-natured people Rang so hard that I thought they would pull down the steeple; So I took out my purse as I hate to be shabby And paid all the men when they came from the abbey. Yet some think it strange they should make such a riot Tabitha Rust, the waiting-maid, takes a bath: 'Twas a glorious sight to behold the fair sex Old Baron Vanteaser, a man of great wealth, Brought his lady the Baroness here for her health; This description of the two sexes bathing in common in the chief water-drinking place of England so recently as during the American War, would seem incredible if it were not confirmed by an almost cotemporary writer, Smollett, in his last, and incomparably his best novel, "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker." Our friend Simkin prepares for a ball: Thank Heaven, of late, my dear mother, my face is Not a little regarded at all public places: For I ride in a chair with my hands in a muff, And have bought a silk coat, and embroidered the cuff; So the tailor advised me to line it with skin. Like a yard of good ribbon tied under his throat? The one is of paper, the other of paste; And my stockings of silk are just come from the hosier, For to-night I'm to dance with the charming Miss Toser. He goes to the ball. After two or thee pages of rhapsodies : But hark! now they strike the melodious string, The vaulted roof echoes, the mansions all ring; At the sound of the hautboy, the bass and the fiddle, Sir Boreas Blubber steps forth in the middle, Like a hollyhock, noble, majestic and tall, Sir Boreas Blubber first opens the ball. Sir Boreas, great in the minuet known, Since the day that for dancing his talents were shown And delivers his hand with an exquisite grace! To a tune that they played us a hundred times o'er? I must find room for some scraps of a public breakfast. Simkin invokes the desire of popularity: 'Twas you made my Lord Ragamuffin come here, Who, they say, has been lately created a peer, And to-day, with extreme complaisance and respect, asked You've heard of my Lady Bunbutter, no doubt, At a snug private party her friends to divert; But they say that of late she's grown sick of the town, Her ladyship's favorite house is The Bear," Now, my lord had the honor of coming down post He said it would greatly our pleasure promote One would think to be wet must be very good fun; For by waggling their gown-tails they seemed to take pains To moisten their pinions, like ducks when it rains; And 'twas pretty to see, how like birds of a feather The people of quality all flocked together; All pressing, addressing, caressing, and fond, Just as so many ganders and geese in a pond. You've read all their names in the news, I suppose, And Madam Van Twister, Her ladyship's sister; Lord Cram and Lord Vulter, Sir Brandish O'Culter, And old Lady Drouser, And the great Hanoverian Baron Pansmouser, Now why should the Muse, my dear mother, relate In landing old Lady Bumfidget and daughter This obsequious lord tumbled into the water; But a nymph of the flood brought him safe to the boat, A worse disaster than that which befell Lord Ragamuffin is in store for our good-humored letter-writer. His friend, Captain Cormorant, who, by the way, turns out to be no captain at all, and who had undertaken, among other fashionable accomplishments, to initiate him in the mysteries of lansquenet, cheats him out of seven hundred pounds; so that Miss Jenny loses her lover, and her cousin his money at one stroke. Prudence and Tabitha also come in for their share of misadventures; and the whole party return crest-fallen and discomfited to the good old Lady Blunderhead and their Yorkshire Manor-house. XXVI. AMERICAN POETS. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER-FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. I DID a great injustice the other day when I said that the Americans had at last a great poet. I should have remembered that poets, like sorrows, "Come not single spies But in battalions." There is commonly a flight of those singing-birds, as we had ourselves at the beginning of the present century; and besides Professor Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Lowell and Poe do the highest honor to America. The person, however, whom I should have most injured myself in forgetting, for my injustice could not damage a reputation such as his, was John G. Whittier, the most intensely national of American bards. Himself a member of the Society of Friends, the two most remarkable of his productions are on subjects in which that active although peaceful sect take a lively interest: the anti-slavery cause, in the present day; and the persecution of the Quakers, which casts such deep disgrace on the memory of the Pilgrim Fathers and their immediate successors in the early history of New England. Strange it seems to us in this milder age, that these men, themselves flying from the intolerance of the Old Country, should, the moment they attained to any thing like power, nay, even while disputing with the native Indians, not the possession of the soil, but the mere privilege of dwelling peaceably therein, at once stiffen themselves into a bigotry and a persecution not excelled by the horrors of the Star Chamber! should, as soon as they attained the requisite physical force, chase and scourge, and |