Where streams from undiscover'd fountains roll,
And winds shall fan them from th' Antarctic pole.
And what though doom'd to shores so far apart
From England's home, that ev'n the home-sick heart
Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recross'd,
How large a space of fleeting life is lost:

Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,
And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,
But jocund in the year's long sunshine roam,
That yields their sickle twice its harvest-home.

There, marking o'er his farm's expanding ring
New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring,

The grey-haired swain, his grandchild sporting round,
Shall walk at eve his little empire's bound,
Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,
And verdant rampart of Acacian thorn,

While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,
The orange-grove's and fig-tree's breath prevails;
Survey with pride beyond a monarch's spoil,
His honest arm's own subjugated soil;
And summing all the blessings God has given,
Put up his patriarchal prayer to Heaven,
That when his bones shall here repose in peace,
The scions of his love may still increase,
And o'er a land where life has ample room,
In health and plenty innocently bloom.

Delightful land, in wildness ev'n benign,
The glorious past is ours, the future thine!
As in a cradled Hercules, we trace
The lines of empire in thine infant face.
What nations in thy wide horizon's span

Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by man!

What spacious cities with their spires shall gleam,
Where now the panther laps a lonely stream,
And all but brute or reptile life is dumb!"
Land of the free! thy kingdom is to come,
Of states, with laws from Gothic bondage burst,
And creeds by charter'd priesthoods unaccurst;
Of navies, hoisting their emblazon'd flags,
Where shipless seas now wash unbeacon'd crags;
Of hosts review'd in dazzling files and squares,
Their pennon'd trumpets breathing native airs,-
For minstrels thou shalt have of native fire,
And maids to sing the songs themselves inspire :-
Our very speech, methinks, in after time,
Shall catch th' Ionian blandness of thy clime;
And whilst the light and luxury of thy skies

Give brighter smiles to beauteous woman's eyes,

The Arts, whose soul is love, shall all spontaneous rise.

Untrack'd in deserts lies the marble mine,

Undug the ore that midst thy roofs shall shine;

Unborn the hands-but born they are to be

Fair Australasia, that shall give to thee

Proud temple-domes, with galleries winding high,
So vast in space, so just in symmetry,
They widen to the contemplating eye,

With colonnaded aisles in long array,
And windows that enrich the flood of day
O'er tesselated pavements, pictures fair,
And niched statues breathing golden air.
Nor there, whilst all that's seen bids Fancy swell,
Shall Music's voice refuse to seal the spell;
But choral hymns shall wake enchantment round,
And organs blow their tempests of sweet sound.

Meanwhile, ere Arts triumphant reach their goal,
How blest the years of pastoral life shall roll!
Ev'n should some wayward hour the settler's mind
Brood sad on scenes for ever left behind,
Yet not a pang that England's name imparts,
Shall touch a fibre of his children's hearts;
Bound to that native world by nature's bond,
Full little shall their wishes rove beyond

Its mountains blue, and melon-skirted streams,

Since childhood loved and dreamt of in their dreams.
How many a name, to us uncouthly wild,
Shall thrill that region's patriotic child,

And bring as sweet thoughts o'er his bosom's chords,
As aught that's named in song to us affords!
Dear shall that river's margin be to him,
Where sportive first he bathed his boyish limb,
Or petted birds, still brighter than their bowers,
Or twin'd his tame young kangaroo with flowers.
But more magnetic yet to memory

Shall be the sacred spot, still blooming nigh,
The bower of love, where first his bosom burn'd,
And smiling passion saw its smile return'd.

Go forth and prosper then, emprizing band:
May He, who in the hollow of his hand
The ocean holds, and rules the whirlwind's sweep,
Assuage its wrath, and guide you on the deep!

THE METROPOLIS IN DANGER.

It is astonishing to think of the insensibility of people in general to the most extreme cases of distress, except when accident draws their particular attention to them!

We were ourselves sitting, on a fine evening in June, gazing with our accustomed placidity on the golden clouds which adorned the western sky, and reflecting with much complacency on the general state of this great city, of which the sun had just taken his leave for the night. As we watched the mysterious process by which a very well-dressed person was evoking flame from the successive gas-lamps of the long line which we command a view of, our thoughts were full of London, of its elegance, its gaiety, its intelligence, its comfort, its immense population; and we were endeavouring to comprehend the means by which a daily supply of food was quietly and regularly conveyed to a million and a half of people, when our reflections were painfully attracted to another point of view; indeed, to a lamentable state of things in general, and to a sense of intolerable calamity, in particular, of most of the residents of

the English metropolis. This was effected by a very interesting publication we at that moment received, with a lion and unicorn at the top of it, on the subject of a Royal Filter for Cisterns, of which one George Robins, not apparently a member of the Royal Society, is the avowed author; a man who evidently feels a painful sense of the distress under which his fellow-citizens are labouring, and is anxious to put an end to what threatens, if unchecked, to put an end to them.

In fact, now we think of it, we had observed a general face of affliction in the streets, and in the parks; a kind of sentimental sorrow mingling with the smiles of social meetings, and giving a more than usually interesting appearance to the fashionable world. The very people in the pit at the Adelphi, when they laughed convulsively at Mr. Mathews, looked as if they had previously been in tears; and as they had cried till they laughed, so many of them, we perceived, laughed till they cried. More than all, we had noticed among those "who slay in chariots," the physicians and surgeons of this town, a peculiar gravity, a tender melancholy, which we had at first hastily ascribed to the general healthiness of the season; and it was in the course of our reflection upon these things that we were led to pass in review all the circumstances in the condition of the giddy crowd below our windows, from which train of thought we were aroused by the Royal Filter.

The clever little work before us begins by stating, very truly, that the health and comfort of every family are intimately "bound up" with the supply of pure and wholesome water; and very reasonable surprise is expressed, that a fact so important should have passed without any notice until about fifteen months ago, when people became convinced, by an eloquent treatise, entitled "The Dolphin," (we are ashamed to confess we never saw it,) that water was actually supplied to them, in this very town, in a polluted and unwholesome condition! It is curious to see how ignorant people may be of their own sufferings. Here were, as we have said, more than a million of people, all of whom could read and write, most of whom could cast accounts, many of whom had even read the Library of Useful Knowledge, and all of whom, or nearly all, had two eyes wherewith to see, a tongue wherewith to taste, and a nose for the main purpose of smelling, yet literally beholding and drinking a water for years and years, from infancy to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to decrepitude, boiled in a morning and evening, unboiled at noon, or later, as might be, fancying all the time that it was a bright, clear, and good water, until "The Dolphin" (how we regret that no copy was sent with the author's respectful compliments,)-until "The Dolphin," we say, convinced all these people that they were, with eyes and mouth open, but blinded understandings, daily swallowing such a combination of filth and horror as all the words in Johnson's Dictionary would fail to do justice to, and productive of dyspepsia, consumption, ill-temper, small-pox, and a long train of evils, including loss of appetite and hair, and premature old age; a water, in fact, so destructive, that there had been nothing so well calculated to destroy the human race, and put an end to the Emigration Committee, since the waters of the general deluge!

But truth is always unwelcome. The author of "The Dolphin" was threatened with prosecution. He appealed to the general voice. A

public meeting was held at the West-end; Parliament was petitioned; the whole country awakened; and a Royal commission (hence the lion and unicorn) appointed to find better water. By these Commissioners a Report has been published, which the author before us (Robins) states to be a document of as great importance as was ever laid before the public. It is a report of one hundred and fifty folio pages, and contains, we are assured, a set of statements so staggering, that "all of them will be read with interest, and some with sensations bordering upon horror." This is really, then, a very shocking business.

Let us see what is said. Nobody can expect us to read a report of a hundred and fifty folio pages at this season of the year; but the work on our table presents us with some very lively extracts. We turn then to Robins. First, we very properly mean to notice what is said by the President of the College of Physicians, who is also physician to the King, and appears as a witness against the vagrant water of the Thames; far different from that lovely stream which erst the poets sung of! then a river of life and beauty, glancing through the richest valley in the world! now a river of darkness and death; "sad Acheron, of sorrow, dark and deep;" flowing in sullen majesty through a population on either bank waiting to be devoured! We are not exaggerating Sir H. H "pronounces the water sent to his house to be a filthy fluid, with which he is disgusted." It was even said, but we believe it is incorrect, that Sir H had given up practice, and left town, after solemnly performing his last duty to the King, by trying to persuade his Majesty to pull down St. James's, and to blow up Buckingham palace, dome and all, and have the royal towers of Windsor removed into Warwickshire. It was evidently impossible to bear up against such a body of water as came to Sir H's house; and, although it is well known that he is one of the kindest and best of physicians, it must have rendered the ordinary duties of life burthensome, and public avocations odious. We look back upon the cheerfulness with which he went through the latter with astonishment," whilst all the while" his domestic cisterns ran liquid filth. Little did we think, that when we heard him so agreeably illustrate the madman of Horace, ("Fuit haud ignobilis Argis,") that there was so little cause for speaking of London water as another ancient, Pindar surely, spoke of water in general, in that admirable commencing line, which has so puzzled the translators; that line, which an English translator has rendered, "Water the first of elements we hold," but which a French author has expressed, "C'est une excellente chose que l'eau."

Then we have another physician, Dr. H, who has actually retired from practice; and who says, from his seclusion, that the decayed vegetable matters in the Thames water produce faulty digestion and impurity of blood," of which the inhabitants of the metropolis are constantly complaining." Really this is still more wonderful! Here are we dining out not unfrequently, say about six days in seven, and if the people whom we meet have a bad digestion, they are surely unconcerned enough about it. Soup, turbot, patties, chicken and tongue, mutton or venison, pastry and trifle, all are trifles to them. Wines innumerable and unpronounceable, besides dessert, they make nothing of. Nor do they vehemently object to supper. So much for faulty digestion! Then, as to impurity of blood, blind and ignorant must we have been in rides

and walks, in parks and gardens, to have seen no outward signs of it; not even at the Horticultural, where the heavens smiled not, but rather wept at the prospect of the calamities which now occupy our reluctant pen. "Ah!" as our good friend M. de Pourceaugnac says, " que c'est une excellente chose que de savoir les choses!"

Mr. K, a surgeon, says every meal is injurious to thousands. Surely the faculty have very little reason to complain of that. But levity is misplaced here, for it is plain that the people of London are dying fast. How can it be otherwise? think of the sewers, (we regret the unavoidable necessity of alluding to this subject,) the hundred and forty-five sewers, equal to the hundred and fifty pages of the Water Report: think of the refuse of the streaming gas-of the off-scourings of lead of the refuse of soap, and colour, and every kind of deadly drug: think only of the numberless unconscious kittens daily consigned to this oblivious water; and all those "unutterable things," as Dr. Jsays in his evidence, reeking, floating, bubbling, oozing, melting; things rank, things sour, things bitter, things oily, things acrid and poisonous; with now and then a dash of suicide for it is well known, that when the nights are dark, hardly a week passes without some unfortunate girl springing over the parapet of the bridges amid the unavailing screams of watchmen. The only wonder is, that the Thames Father Thames, as he has been called, and who, like Saturn, seems inclined to devour, his children-should have been allowed to conduct itself through London in such an indecorous way for such a length of time; and all the time, too, every man and woman dyspeptic, taking dinner pills, daily becoming more bilious, and deaths frightfully increasing.

Why, Dr. J himself, we see, was actually obliged to leave Spring Gardens on this very account; giving up a very advantageous lease, and leaving a comfortable residence in that rural part of the town to be demolished by the rats. It was impossible for him to remain; he states that he had "a pain after taking his breakfast," every morning, as sure as the morning came. No sooner had he taken his tea or coffee, no matter which, with a little dry toast, and perhaps an egg, or a small portion of broiled salmon, or fried bacon, which the faculty, after some thousands of years' tinkering of the human body, (as Mr. Colton was pleased to call it,) have discovered to be the sovereignest thing on earth against indigestion,-than there came on a prevailing pain in all the regions of the bowels; first slight, a kind of pleasing colic, hardly interrupting the perusal of "The Times" newspaper; then more serious, and inconsistent with study; and at last perfectly frightful. This was entirely caused by the turbulent water of the Thames; and we are assured that the good Doctor (for whom we have a great regard, having once consulted him ourselves-a case of morbid sensibility, &c.) has exceedingly improved in health and looks since his removal. He still hints that several young ladies have "bowel complaints" from the same cause. We are very sorry to hear it; for neither beauty, nor delicacy, nor wit, nor the utmost art in devising albums, and finding out charades, or acting them, nay, not even music and drawing, can make any young lady interesting in our imagination, who has a real, true, substantial pain in the bowels every day of her life in London. We quite agree with Dr. Jthat a time

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