Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
Or eharg'd with am'rous sighs of absent swains,
Or nymphs responsive, equally affect
His horse and him, unconscious of them all.
But oh, th' important budget! ushered in
With such heart-shaking music, who can say
What are its tidings; have our troops awak'd,
Or do they still, as if with opium drugg'd
Snore to the murmurs of th' Atlantic wave?'
Is India free? and does she wear her plum'd
And jewell'd turban with a smile of peace;
Sweet bashfulness! it claims at least this praise:
The dearth of information and good sense
That it foretells us, always comes to pass.
Cataracts of declamation thunder here;
The forests of no-meaning sproad the page
In which all comprehension wanders lost;
While fields of pleasantry amuse us there
With merry descants on a nation's woes.
The rest appears a wilderness of strange
But gay confusion—roses for the cheeks
And lilies for the brows of faded age,
Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald,
Heaven, earth, and ocean plunder'd of their sweets,
Nectareous essences, Olympian dews;
Sermons, and city feasts, aud fav'rite airs,
JEthereal journeys, submarine exploits,
And Katerfelto/ with his hair on end
At his own wonders, wond'ring for his bread.
NOTES.
1 Atlantio Wave, This passage was 2 Katerfelto, a ce'ebratcd juggler, written duriug the first American war.
SPELL AND PRONOUNOE— responsive, answering toud'get, here, a newspaper. lis con
tents occupy the remaining lines.
ENGLAND BEFORE THE TIME OF ALFRED.
1. We who have been born in England at a time when the country is so thickly peopled, so carefully cultivated, and so crowded with towns and villages and busy cities, find it difficult to imagine the time could ever have been when England was a wild and thinly inhabited island, the natives of which were little less barbarous than the inhabitants of some of the South Sea Islands whom we