But all was vain. And while decay

Came like a tranquil moonlight o'er him, And found him gouty still and gay,

With no fair nurse to bless or bore him;

His rugged smile and easy chair,

His dread of matrimonial lectures,

His wig, his stick, his powdered hair

Were themes for very strange conjectures.

Some sages thought the stars above

Had crazed him with excess of knowledge: Some heard he had been crossed in love Before he came away from college;

Some darkly hinted that His Grace

Did nothing, great or small, without him!

Some whispered, with a solemn face,

That there was something odd about him.

I found him at three score and ten

A single man, but bent quite double,
Sickness was coming on him then

To take him from a world of trouble.
He prosed of sliding down the hill,
Discovered he grew older daily;
One frosty day he made his will,

The next he sent for Dr. Baillie.

And so he lived, and so he died;
When last I sat beside his pillow
He shook my hand: Ah me!" he cried,
Penelope must wear the willow!

Tell her I hugged her rosy chain

While life was flickering in the socket,

"I've left my house and grounds to Fag,
(I hope his master's shoes will suit him!)
And I've bequeathed to you my nag,

To feed him for my sake, or shoot him.
The vicar's wife will take old Fox;
She'll find him an uncommon mouser,
And let her husband have my box,

My Bible and my Assmanshäuser.

"Whether I ought to die or not

My doctors cannot quite determine;
It's only clear that I shall rot

And be, like Priam, food for vermin.
My debts are paid. But Nature's debt
Almost escaped my recollection!
Tom, we shall meet again; and yet

I cannot leave you my direction!"

The next poem, which describes a first flirtation (for it hardly deserves the name of first love), is as true as if it had been written in prose by Jane Austen.

THE BELLE OF THE BALL.

Years, years ago, ere yet my dreams,
Had been of being wise or witty;
Ere I had done with writing themes,
Or yawned o'er this infernal 'Chitty,'
Years, years ago, while all my joys,

Were in my fowling-piece and filly,

In short, while I was yet a boy,

I fell in love with Laura Lily.

I saw her at a country ball

There where the sound of flute and fiddle,
Gave signal, sweet in that old hall,

Of hands across and down the middle;
Hers was the subtlest spell by far,

Of all that sets young hearts romancing,

She was our queen, our rose, our star,

And when she danced-Oh, heaven! her dancing!

Dark was her hair; her hand was white;

Her voice was exquisitely tender;

Her eyes were full of liquid light;
I never saw a waist so slender.

Her every look, her every smile,

Shot right and left a score of arrows;

I thought 'twas Venus from her isle,

And wondered where she'd left her sparrows!

She talked of politics or prayers,

Of Southey's prose, or Wordsworth's sonnets,

Of daggers, or of dancing bears,

Of battles, or the last new bonnets;

By candle-light, at twelve o'clock,

To me it mattered not a tittle,

If those bright lips had quoted Locke,

I might have thought they murmured Little.

Through sunny May, through sultry June,
I loved her with a love eternal;

I spoke her praises to the moon,
I wrote them for the Sunday journal.

VOL. I.

I

My mother laughed ; I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling.
My father frowned; but how should gout
Find any happiness in kneeling?

She was the daughter of a dean,
Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
She had one brother just thirteen,
Whose colour was extremely hectic ;
Her grandmother for many a year,

Had fed the parish with her bounty;
Her second cousin was a peer,

And lord-lieutenant of the county.

But titles and the three per cents,

And mortgages and great relations, And India Bonds, and tithes, and rents, Oh! what are they to love's sensations? Black eyes, fair foreheads, elustering locks, Such wealth, such honours Cupid chooses; He cares as little for the stocks,

As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.

She sketched: the vale, the wood, the beach
Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading;
She botanized: I envied each

Young blossom in her boudoir fading;
She warbled Handel: it was grand,
She made the Catalani jealous;

She touched the organ: I could stand

For hours and hours and blow the bellows.

She kept an album, too, at home,

Well filled with all an album's glories;

Paintings of butterflies and Rome;

Pattern for trimming; Persian stories; Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo ;

Fierce odes to famine and to slaughter, And autographs of Prince Le Boo,

And recipes for elder-water.

And she was flattered, worshipped, bored,

Her steps were watched, her dress was noted,

Her poodle dog was quite adored,

Her sayings were extremely quoted.
She laughed, and every heart was glad
As if the taxes were abolished:
She frowned, and every look was sad,
As if the opera were demolished.

She smiled on many just for fun-

I knew that there was nothing in it;

I was the first, the only one,

Her heart had thought of for a minute.

I knew it, for she told me so,

In phrase that was divinely moulded ;— She wrote a charming hand, and oh!

How neatly all her notes were folded.

Our love was like most other loves,—
A little glow, a little shiver;

A rosebud and a pair of gloves,

And "Fly not yet," upon the river; Some jealousy of some one's heir;

Some hopes of dying broken-hearted;

A miniature; a lock of hair;

The usual vows;—and then we parted.