Only to hear as every year came round,
That Mr. Treasurer had spent her pound;
And as she loved her sable brother,
That Mr. Treasurer must have another!

But, spite of pounds or guineas,
Instead of giving any hint

Of turning to a neutral tint,

The plaguy negroes and their piccaninnies
Were still the colour of the bird that caws-
Only some very aged souls
Showing a little gray upon their polls,
Like daws!

However, nothing dash'd

By such repeated failures, or abash'd,
The Court still met; the Chairman and Directors,
The Secretary, good at pen and ink,
The worthy Treasurer, who kept the chink,
And all the cash Collectors;

With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous,
Without whose help no charlatan alive,
Or bubble Company could hope to thrive,
Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous-
Those good and easy innocents in fact,
Who willingly receiving chaff for corn,
As pointed out by Butler's tact,
Still find a secret pleasure in the act
Of being pluck'd and shorn!

However, in long hundreds there they were,
Thronging the hot, and close, and dusty court,
To hear once more addresses from the Chair,
And regular Report.

Alas! concluding in the usual strain,

That what with everlasting wear and tear, The scrubbing-brushes hadn't got a hair— The brooms-mere stumps-would never serve again

The soap was gone, the flannels all in shreds,
The towels worn to threads,

The tubs and pails too shattered to be mended-
And what was added with a deal of pain,
But as accounts correctly would explain,
Tho' thirty thousand pounds had been expended-
The Blackamoors had still been wash'd in vain!

"In fact the negroes were as black as ink, Yet, still, as the Committee dared to think, And hoped the proposition was not rash, A rather free expenditure of cash-" But ere the prospect could be made more sunnyUp jump'd a little, lemon-colour'd man, And with an eager stammer, thus began, In angry earnest, though it sounded funny : "What! More subscriptions! No-no-no,not I!

You have had time-time-time enough to try! They WON'T come white! then why-why-why -why-why,

More money?"

"Why!" said the Chairman, with an accent bland, And gentle waving of his dexter hand,

66

Why must we have more dross, and dirt, and dust,

More filthy lucre, in a word more gold

The why, sir, very easily is told,

Because Humanity declares we must!

We've scrubb'd the Negroes till we've nearly kill'd 'em,

And finding that we cannot wash them white, But still their nigritude offends the sight,

We mean to gild 'em!"

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATHENÆUM.

MY DEAR SIR,-The following Ode was written anticipating the tone of some strictures on my writings, by the gentleman to whom it is addressed. I have not seen his book; but I know by hearsay that some of my verses are characterized as profaneness and ribaldry "-citing, in proof, the description of a certain sow, from whose jaw a cabbage sprout

Protruded as the dove so stanch

For peace supports an olive branch.

66

If the printed works of my Censor had not prepared me for any misapplication of types, I should have been surprised by this misapprehension of one of the commonest emblems. In some cases the dove unquestionably stands for the Divine Spirit; but the same bird is also a lay representative of the peace of this world, and as such, has figured time out of mind in allegorical pictures. The sense in which it was used by me is plain from the context; at least, it would be plain to any one but a fisher for faults, predisposed to carp at some things, to dab at others, and to flounder in all. But I am possibly in error. It is the female swine, perhaps, that is profaned in the eyes of the Oriental tourist. Men find strange ways of marking their intolerance; and the spirit is certainly strong enough, in Mr. W.'s works, to set up a creature as sacred, in sheer opposition to the Mussulman, with whom she is a beast of abomination. It would only be going the whole sow.

I am, dear Sir, yours very truly,

THOS. HOOD.

ODE TO RAE WILSON, ESQUIRE.

Close, close your eyes with holy dread,
And weave a circle round him thrice;
For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise!"

COLERIDGE.

"It's very hard them kind of men
Won't let a body be."

OLD BALLAD.

A WANDERER, Wilson, from my native land,
Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee,
Where rolls between us the eternal sea,
Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand,-
Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall;
Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call;
Across the wavy waste between us stretch'd,
A friendly missive warns me of a stricture,
Wherein my likeness you have darkly etch'd,
And tho' I have not seen the shadow sketch'd,
Thus I remark prophetic on the picture.

I guess the features:-in a line to paint
Their moral ugliness, I'm not a saint.
Not one of those self-constituted saints,
Quacks-not physicians in the cure of souls,
Censors who sniff out moral taints,

And call the devil over his own coals-
Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God,
Who write down judgments with a pen hard-
nibb'd;

Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod,
Commending sinners, not to ice thick-ribb'd,
But endless flames, to scorch them like flax,--
Yet sure of heav'n themselves, as if they'd cribb'd
Th' impression of St. Peter's keys in wax!

Of such a character no single trace
Exists, I know, in my fictitious face;
There wants a certain cast about the eye;
A certain lifting of the nose's tip:
A certain curling of the nether lip,
In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky;
In brief it is an aspect deleterious,
A face decidedly not serious,

A face profane, that would not do at all
To make a face at Exeter Hall,—

That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray,
And laud each other face to face,

Till ev'ry farthing candle ray

Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace!

Well-be the graceless lineaments confest!
I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth;
And dote upon a jest

"Within the limits of becoming mirth ;'
No solemn sanctimonious face I pull,
Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious-
Nor study in my sanctum supercilious
To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.
I pray for grace-repent each sinful act-
Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible;
And love my neighbour, far too well, in fact,
To call and twit him with a godly tract
That's turn'd by application to a libel.
My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven,
All creeds I view with toleration thorough,
And have a horror of regarding heaven
As anybody's rotten borough.

What else? no part I take in party fray,
With tropes from Billingsgate's slang-whanging

tartars,

I fear no Pope-and let great Ernest play
At Fox and Goose with Fox's Martyrs!

I own I laugh at over-righteous men,