Will bless the days when, usher of a school,
He reign'd the tyrant of domestic rule;
Panting to leave his greatness in the lurch,
And change his dear-bought sceptre for the birch.
Such is the state of France!—but worse remains,
Too well foreseen by those who tread her plains;
For who will bound the pillage and the fray,
Where all would legislate, and none obey;
Where knaves ignite their country's funeral pyre,
And each improves the vices of his sire?

France too, to rage- though not to reason-brought,
Must find how little time and change have wrought;
And springing to resume her fancied rights,
Eclipse the madness of her former flights;
Till rising nations, sick'ning at her crimes,
Shall crush the wild Gomorrah of her times;
Her sons be scattered, and her name be given
A mockery to all the winds of heaven!

Enough of France! with anarchy at home,
In search of ills, ah! wherefore should we roam?
Mark where St. Stephen's frowns, and long hath frown'd,
The nucleus which rebellion winds around;

Scene of the patriot's tear, the statesman's toil,-
Draw near, but pause!—we tread on holy soil!
Pause, for here Pitt a wondering senate fired,
Here Burke blazed forth, and Perceval expired;
Here wit or goodness storm'd or won the heart,
A Cato's virtue, or a Tully's art;

Here Erin's wrongs from Grattan's breast were wrung,
And England's glory burst from Canning's tongue.

Now shift the scene! suppose the mob possess

The power our fathers labour'd to repress;
Suppose the peers have bow'd beneath the storm,
Whate'er its name, rebellion or reform;

And what remains?-should still that house exist,
Think of what wretches it must then consist:
Men who most rail at good and holy things,
Men who despise the vassalage of kings;
Fools, zealots, deists, levellers, and slaves,
Intriguing lawyers, and provincial knaves;
Villains, well pleased a falling land to rob,
The scum of crimes, the echoes of the mob!

Oh, last indignity! Oh, foul disgrace!
Hide, O Britannia, hide thy blushing face!
Is't not enough that now a Hunt may fume,
Back'd by some low economist like Hume?
That nauseous ribaldry and vulgar wit
Insult the walls that trembled at a Pitt?
And must we tamely, miserably wait,

Till blacker scoundrels form the mock debate?-
Till traitors sign our glorious rights away,
Titles their jest, and royalty their prey!
When bleeding England to her senate sends
The hustings' patriot, the people's friends-
Her lands distributed, her laws asleep,
Her debt to thousands cancell'd at a sweep –
Her beroes mark'd with jealousy and scorn,
Their widows left in penury to mourn―
Her nobles exiles on a foreign strand,
The law of birthright scouted from the land ;-
Yes! who can view the gathering storm, nor trace
A lurking regicide in every face?

Nor see in stern reality advance

The woes of Poland, or the crimes of France?
When England to her self-abasement bends,
Cursing the very men she thought her friends,
And sees some tyrant make her sons his slaves,
Worse than her own democracy of knaves
(For such it is since first the world begun-
The thousand despots still must end in one),
Leaving her name, her greatness, and her crimes,
A dark perversity to other times!

Ye wretched parricides! ye villain band!
Ye mad destroyers of your native land!

Ye who would crush our comforts and our bliss,
And hurl destruction on an isle like this!

O, that my throbbing heart could ever hope
To hate like Junius, or to lash like Pope!

Could pour my feelings in a single word,

And that one word could crush-it should be heard! Know, though ye draw your watchword from the throne, Ye sign no less its sentence than your own!

And glean this truth from ages that have gone,

The mob's first prey are those who urged them on;
When Grey may find the wretches he has led
Fulfil the vision of the sever'd head.

'Tis hard to say who most is Fortune's sport,
Who courts the crowd, or helps to crowd the court;
But think what ills the blinder wretch await,
Who apes alike democracy and state:

Yet such a strange anomaly is Grey,

Less knave than fool-the Proteus of his day;
Who now, his monarch's guest, upholds his rights,
And now assists some rebel in his flights;
At one time freedom and the rabble's martyr,
And now bedizen'd with the George and Garter;
Now chatting politics with tailoring Place,
And now- -the haughty champion of his race!

In parts superior, and in rank his peer,
See Brougham approach-Rebellion's pioneer!
Lo! where he comes, the monarch of the mob,
One hand uncaps him, and one-guards his fob;
While from the stew, from alley, and from den,
Pour forth the knaves he flatters they are men;
The brothel champion, and the petty thief,
Lured less by him than by his handkerchief;
See from his coach the horses they undo,
The four-legg'd beasts unharness'd for the two!

He speaks they shout-and, warming with applause,
He shakes with ecstasy their greasy paws;
In thought already grasps a Cromwell's lot,
A Lord Protector-or a Lord knows what!
Such are the chiefs of that insatiate ring,
Who form th' advisers of their patriot king;
The remnant of a faction half gone by,
Till France held out a watchword in July;
Acknowledged villains and proverbial fools,
Alike the rabble's leaders and their tools.
And there are others, men of little note,
The ready hawkers of the hireling vote;
Men who in leading-strings their lesson conn,
And blindly help, or passively look on;
With noise supplying what in sense they lack,
Harmless when single, dangerous in a pack :

Yet such as these can rob a glorious realm,'
And raise a mob of Dracos to the helm;
With horrid triumph from her throne have hurl'd
The first, the noblest country in the world!

Lo! the proud ship, whose glorious race is o'er,
Drawn from the waves to rot upon the shore!
What gave the stroke-the cannon or the rock?
The clash of battle, or the tempest's shock?
No! the vile worm hath eat into her side,
And check'd the wild course of the ocean's pride;
Its slow and secret workings had prevail'd,
Where man stood awed, and elements had fail'd!
Yes! all is o'er,-on happier climes to light,
See England's Genius ready for her flight;
See, her thick laurels drooping on her head,
She points with vain persuasion to the dead;
Or fondly watches with approving smile,
The warrior champion of her still-loved isle;
By Wellesley's side she takes her pious stand,
And sheds a last sad halo on the land!

My country, oh, my country! on thy shore
The patriot's feeling warms the heart no more!
What now remains of all we love to trace
Of merry England, and her happy race?
Her manly sports, the pride of bolder days-
The evening tale, the hospitable blaze-
The joyous laugh that spoke the mind as free-
The village May-pole, and the green-wood tree;
All, all are gone! by vice induced to roam,
No cheerful hearth invites the labourer home;
But, where the ale-house prompts the low excess,
He gathers treason from the hireling press;—
An envious wretch, a blot upon his time,
Where march of knowledge is the march to crime.
I stand upon the spot that gave me birth,
Whose scenes once echoed to domestic mirth!
I stand alone where many a heart beguil'd,
And mourn in manhood where in youth I smiled!
Yet dear each path, and sweet each tale they tell
Of rapturous meetings, or the wild farewell;
When thought dreams back affections that have fled,
And paints the lost, the faithless, and the dead;
Some in the tomb, and others far away
'Mid Zembla's snows, or India's burning ray;
Yet fancy, roused by memory's ardent gaze,
Half grasps the joys and hopes of other days;
Redeeming from the wreck of happier years
The long-forgotten luxury of tears!

And they have gone! the lovely and the gay
Have pass'd with life's first novelty away:
For me no eyes with fond expectance shine,
No bosom beats responsively to mine;

I have no home, no children, brother, friend,
None with whom kindred tenderness can blend ;
Each wish thrown back on life's tempestuous sea,
All, all, my country! sadly turn to thee!

Oh, when such thoughts with deeper warmth impart

The patriot's first best feeling to the heart;
When, glancing thence, to England's self I roam,
The glorious land which holds that early home;
May not th' indignant blush suffuse my face,
To see what tools can work a realm's disgrace?

That land where nature vies with Paphia's bowers,
And both the Indies pour their golden showers-
That isle which once her mighty swarms unroll'd,
To colonise new worlds, or conquer old—
Now doom'd to fall by faction's petty rage,
A gilded toy for Talleyrand's old age;
Knaves in her senates, ruin on the plain,

Crime lights the torch where Folly spreads the train!

Oh, thou, whose charms have roused the poet's sigh,
Maid of the downy cheek and azure eye;

Thou who didst bid each nobler thought awake,
And praised the verses for the poet's sake;
O, when the flames thy sire has help'd to raise,
Burst o'er our country in rebellion's blaze;

How wilt thou bear those scenes of blood and strife,
The clash, the scream, the rapine, and the knife?
So softly frail, so delicately weak,

No breath save love's should breathe upon thy cheek;
O! when no human aid those ills can stay,
Where, my beloved! whither shall we stray?
To some wild region seldom trod before,
Or Italy's calm vales and classic shore?
Yes! 'mid the mockeries of almighty Rome,
We'll think at eve upon our distant home;
See at our feet the relics of the free,
And learn from them what England soon must be,
When strangers weep o'er London's marble gloom,
And search through ruins for a Wellesley's tomb !

THE DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE BRITISH.

BY COLONEL RICHARD H. HICKORY, OF CEDAR SWAMP.

PART II.

THE universal attention which our last Number has excited, especially by that gem of literature, Colonel Hickory's flattering account of the Domestic Manners of the British, is an inducement to resume the consideration of his manuscript without loss of time; and we do this with the greater alacrity, as we have received several most impertinent letters on the subject.

What does Angus Garrochan, of Greenock, mean by insinuating that our account of his neighbours is calumnious? We, however, forgive him, for the Greenock people are almost as thin-skinned as the Americans; and therefore we are none surprised that they should not be satisfied with Colonel Hickory's description of their elegant peculiarities. As to his remark on Cartsdyke being the mother of Greenock, we confess ourselves not adequately acquainted with the local history of that ancient borough of Baronry to give a decisive opinion; but we can assure Mr. Garrochan that both the venerable parent and her daughter have our best wishes for their prosperity.

We must say to Bailey Snedden, of Paisley, that he has been a little too hasty and testy in his animadversions on the Colonel's letter. Had he waited till he had seen that which we are about to communicate, he would have confessed that his opinion of the Colonel was the unjust progeny of prejudice. It may be quite true that the females which the Colonel describes with brown duffle cloaks and bare feet, are not ladies. The Colonel did not say they were; he only called them "ladyes," which may be, in the American vocabulary, helps of the feminine gender. But we have no time for controversy: our object is to shew what an intelligent foreigner observed peculiar in our manners and customs, and has spoken as truly of us as our own travellers are in the practice of doing concerning nations which they happen to visit.

LETTER III.