Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed,

Pundit or papist, saint or sinner, He found a stable for his steed,

And welcome for himself and dinner.

If, when he reached his journey's end,
And warmed himself in court and college,
He had not gained an honest friend,

And twenty curious scraps of knowledge; If he departed as he came,

With no new light on love or liquor, Good sooth the traveller was to blame, And not the Vicarage or the Vicar.

His talk was like a stream which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses;
It slipped from politics to puns;

It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep

For dressing eels or shoeing horses.

He was a shrewd and sound divine,

Of loud dissent the mortal terror; And when by dint of page and line,

He 'stablished truth or startled error, The Baptist found him far too deep;

The Deist sighed with saving sorrow,

And the lean Levite went to sleep

And dreamt of eating pork to-morrow.

His sermon never said or showed

That earth is foul, that Heaven is gracious,

Without refreshment on the road

From Jerome or from Athanasius;

And sure a righteous zeal inspired

The hand and head that penned and planned them, For all who understood admired,

And some who did not understand them.

He wrote too, in a quiet way,

Small treatises and smaller verses,
And sage remarks on chalk and clay,
And hints to noble lords and nurses;
True histories of last year's ghost;
Lines to a ringlet or a turban,
And trifles for the "Morning Post,"
And nothings for Sylvanus Urban.

He did not think all mischief fair,
Although he had a knack of joking;
He did not make himself a bear,
Although he had a taste for smoking.
And when religious sects ran mad

He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a man's belief is bad

It will not be improved by burning.

And he was kind and loved to sit

In the low hut or garnished cottage, And praise the farmer's homely wit,

And share the widow's homelier pottage.

At his approach complaint grew mild,
And when his hand unbarred the shutter,
The clammy lips of fever smiled

The welcome that they could not utter.

He always had a tale for me

Of Julius Cæsar or of Venus;

From him I learned the rule of three,

Cat's-cradle, leap-frog, and Quæ genus;
I used to singe his powdered wig,

To steal the staff he put such trust in,
And make the puppy dance a jig

When he began to quote Augustine.

Alack the change! In vain I look

For haunts in which by boyhood trifled;

The level lawn, the trickling brook,

The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled!
The church is larger than before,

You reach it by a carriage entry;
It holds three hundred people more,
And pews are fitted for the gentry.

Sit in the Vicar's seat: you'll hear
The doctrine of a gentle Johnian;
Whose hand is white, whose voice is clear,

Whose tone is very Ciceronian.

Where is the old man laid?

Look down

And construe on the slab before you—

"Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown,

Vir nullâ non donandus lauro."

The man who wrote the above admirable portrait was as good as he was clever. The next has equal

merit :

QUINCE.

Near a small village in the West,
Where many very worthy people
Eat, drink, play whist, and do their best
To guard from evil church and steeple,
There stood―alas, it stands no more!—
A tenement of brick and plaster,
Of which, for forty years and four,

My good friend Quince was lord and master.

Welcome was he in hut and hall,

To maids and matrons, peers and peasants; He won the sympathies of all

By making puns and making presents. Though all the parish was at strife,

He kept his counsel and his carriage,

And laughed, and loved a quiet life,

And shrunk from chancery suits and marriage.

Sound was his claret and his head,

Warm was his double ale and feelings;

His partners at the whist-club said

That he was faultless in his dealings.

He went to church but once a-week,
Yet Dr. Poundtext always found him
An upright man, who studied Greek,
And liked to see his friends around him.

Asylums, hospitals and schools

He used to swear were made to cozen;

All who subscribed to them were fools-
And he subscribed to half-a-dozen.
It was his doctrine that the poor
Were always able, never willing;
And so the beggar at the door

Had first abuse and then a shilling.

Some public principles he had,

But was no flatterer nor fretter;
He rapped his box when things were bad
And said I cannot make them better.

And much he loathed the patriot's snort,
And much he scorned the placeman's snuffle,
And cut the fiercest quarrels short

With, "Patience, gentlemen, and shuffle!"

For full ten years his pointer, Speed,

Had couched beneath his master's table, For twice ten years his old white steed Had fattened in his master's stable.

Old Quince averred upon his troth

They were the ugliest beasts in Devon ; And none knew why he fed them both With his own hands, six days in seven.

Whene'er they heard his ring or knock,

Quicker than thought the village slatterns Flung down the novel, smoothed the frock, And took up Mrs. Glasse or patterns. Alice was studying baker's bills;

Louisa looked the queen of knitters; Jane happened to be hemming frills;

And Nell by chance was making fritters.