102 THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

wrote the following.

It will be seen that

He was a man of letters' who It is a new style of poetry altogether. every letter of the final word must be pronounced as though DILWORTH himself presided at the perusal. The letter or letters in Italics will be found to constitute the rhyme. There is a good deal more of it, but this is sufficient to serve as a specimen :

'ON going forth last night a friend to see,

I met a man, by trade s-n-o-b;

Reeling along the path he held his way:

'Ho! ho!' quoth I, 'he's d-r-u-n-k!'

THE following anecdote of the DUKE OF WELLINGTon, which we derive from an original source of the highest respectability, may be relied upon as entirely authentic : Lord WELLINGTON was dining at a public dinner at Bordeaux, given to him by the authorities, when he received a despatch from Paris, informing him of the abdication of NAPOLEON. He turned to his aid-de-camp, FREEMANTLE: 'Well,' said he, in his knowing sportsman tone, we've run

PERILS OF A JACKASS.

103

the fox to his hole at last.' FREEMANTLE. NAPOLEON has abdicated.' FREEMANTLE uttered an exclamation of surprise and delight. 'Hush! not a word!' said WELLINGTON; let 's have our dinner comfortably.' He laid the letter beside him, and went on calmly eating his dinner. When the dinner was over, 'There!' said he to Monsieur LYNCH, the Mayor of Bordeaux, 'there's something will please you.' The mayor cast his eye over the letter, and in an instant was on the table announcing the news. The saloon rang with acclamations for several minutes. The mayor then begged leave to give a toast: 'WELLINGTON, the Liberator of France!' It was received with thundering applause. The Spanish consul rose, and begged leave to give a toast. It was the same: WELLINGTON, the Liberator of France!' There was another thunder of applause. The Portuguese consul did the same, with like effect. The mayor rose again, and gave' WELLINGTON, the Liberator of EUROPE!' Here the applause was astounding. WELLINGTON, who sat all the while picking his teeth, now rose, made one of his knowing civil bows to the company round: 'JACK,' said he, turning to FREEMANTLE, 'let's have coffee."

'What do you mean?' said

THE 'Pioneer Watch' will find none but admirers. We hope to hear often from the writer. He will always be

104

A MAN'S OWN HOME.

cordially welcomed.

His sketch of the old mule is like a pictured animal by PAUL POTTER; and if his description of the bray of a jackass is not perfection, we cannot conceive of such a thing: an asthma, carried on by powerful machinery!' DICKENS never hit off any thing more felicitously. Speaking of jack-asses,' what a melancholy fact that is, which is recorded by a Louisiana journal: 'While the 'mentangentrie' was being exhibited here, an old negro man drove his cart, which was drawn by a mule, near the pavilion, with a view of taking a peep at the monkeys. The mule and cart were left alone while CATO amused himself at the 'show.' When the performance was over, the company commenced packing up for the next village, and when the canvass was withdrawn, the elephant stood naked just before the mule, which gave one single bray, and fell dead in the harness.' Who can depict the horror, the intense, the 'excreüciating' horror, which must have pervaded that poor donkey's bosom!' None but a jackass can appreciate the depth of the emotion conveyed by that sonorous bray, with its 'dying fall!'

THE following thoughts, by the author of 'Friends in Council,' are replete with the true feeling of which they are the offspring: 'A man's own home is a serious place to him. There it is he has known the sweetness and the

INSIGNIA OF 'HENPECKERY.'

105

bitterness of early loves and early friendships. There, mayhap, he has suffered one of those vast bereavements which was like a tearing away of a part of his own soul: when he thought each noise in the house, hearing noises that he never heard before, must be something they were doing in the room the room-where lay all that was mortal of some one inexpressibly dear to him; when he awoke morning after morning to struggle with a grief which seemed as new, as appalling, and as large as on the first day; which indeed, being part of himself, and thus partaking of his renovated powers, rose equipped with what rest or alacrity sleep had given him; and sank, unconquered, only when he was too wearied in body and mind to attend to it, or to any thing.'

'I've always remarked,' says that profound observer, Mr. 'CHAWLS YELLOWPLUSH,' that when you see a wife atakin' on airs onto herself, a-scoldink, and internally atalkin' about 'her dignity' and 'her branch,' that the husband is inwariably a spoon.' A friend of ours says that he was reminded of this sage remark the other night, in coming down the Hudson. A large, fat, pompous woman, who was ever and anon overlooking her husband, (a thin, lank personage, with a baby in his arms, who exhibited every mark of prolonged annoyance,) in reply to a meek

106

SONNETEERING.

complaint on his part of fatigue, and the expression of a wish that the nurse might very soon get over her sea-sickness, said:

'I never saw a man conduct so before-never, on the face o' the globéd airth! If I'd ha' known that you was goin' to act in this way, I certainly would n't ha' fetched you !'

The gentleman straitway sang the 'Lay of the Henpecked' to the crying baby, and from that time forth, was as mum as an oyster.

'BYRON says, in a letter to Moore, 'I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise; and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions.' To which I subscribe. I do not mean to say that good sonnets have not been written. I have seen such; it is the school that is bad. They are like Flemish pictures, or as the painter said of the sardines, Little fishes done in oil. But as I have been requested to write a sonnet, I will not refuse you, yet I am sure I would not do so again even for a friend; that is, a friend for whom I had an especial regard: sonneteering is too nice a matter; the better done, the worse; and I think, with DISRAELI, 'Extreme exactness is the sublime of fools.' Nevertheless here is the thing. If you wish to put it among your