Sometimes, all for fights agog,
To t'other end o'the town I jog,
When St. James's bells ring round,
And the royal fiddles sound,
When every lord and lady's bum
Jigs it in the drawing-room;

And young and old dance down the tune,
In honour of the fourth of June;

Till candles fail, and eyes are sore,
Then home we hie, to talk it o'er,
With stories told of many a treat,
How lady Swab the sweetmeats eat;
She was pinch'd, and something worse,
And she was fobb'd, and lost her purse;
Tells how the drudging Weltjie sweat,
To bake his custards duly set,

When, in one night, ere clock went seven,
His 'prentice-lad had robb'd the oven
Of more than twenty hands had put on,
Then lies him down, the little glutton,
Stretch'd lumbering 'fore the fire, they tell ye,
And bakes the custards in his belly;
Then, crop-sick, down the stairs he flings,
Before his master's bell yet rings.

Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By hoofs and wheels soon lull'd asleep.

But the City takes me then,
And the hums of busy men,

Where throngs of train-band captains bold,
In time of peace, fierce meetings hold,
With stores of stock-jobbers, whose lies
Work change of stocks and bankruptcies;
While bulls and bears alike contend
To get that cash they dare not spend.
Then let aldermen appear,

In scarlet robe, with chandelier,
And city-feasts and gluttony,

With balls upon the lord-mayor's-day;
Sights that young 'prentices remember,
Sleeping and waking, all November.

Then to the playhouses anon, If Quick or Bannister be on,

Or drollest Parsons, child of Drury,
Bawls out his damns with comic fury.

And ever, against hum-drum cares,
Sing me some of Dibdin's airs;
Married to his own queer wit,

Such as my shaking sides may split,
In notes, with many a jolly bout,

Near Beaufort's Buildings oft roar'd out,
With wagging curls, and smirk so cunning,
His rig on many a looby running,
Exposing all the ways and phizzes,

Of "Wags, and Oddities, and Quizzes;"
That Shuter's self might heave his head
From drunken snoozes on a bed

Of pot-house benches sprawl'd, and hear
Such laughing songs as won the ear
Of all the town, his slip to cover,
Whene'er he met 'em half seas over.

Freaks like these if thou canst give,
Fun, with thee I wish to live.

N° 54. SATURDAY, MAY 25.

Civitatem quis deceat status
Curo, et urbi solicitus timeo.

The care of this great city is upon my mind, and occasions me much anxiety and alarm.

THERE lived an Athenian, of the name of Thrasilus, who was mad in the pleasantest manner imaginable. He cherished a conceit that the gods had bestowed upon him the empire of the ocean, and maintained stoutly that every ship which put to shore in the

He was thus the

Pyræus, was his own property. richest man in Greece, or in the world, without encountering any hazards, or exciting any envy. He was the greatest, with the fewest enemies, and with the least danger from conspiracies and rebellions. Of those which were wrecked, he took no pains to make any inquiries, but was beyond measure delighted when a vessel came safe into port, with a valuable lading. He lived a long time in this flattering delusion, till one of his brothers, who had a tender regard for him, arrived from Sicily. By his directions he was attended by a skilful physician, who succeeded in restoring him to the sound possession of his faculties. This was no sooner effected, than his cheerfulness in a great measure abandoned him; and he was wont ever after to declare, that he had never been so happy as when he drove a trade with all parts of the world from his own port, the Pyræus.

The case of this happy madman in some degree resembles my own; for the truth is, I have so long exercised the privilege of dictating to my countrymen, that I sometimes feel as if every thing I saw around me was my own property; and whatever my neighbours enjoyed, was held under me on condition of their good behaviour. Let no good-natured friend therefore endeavour to disenchant my mind from so pleasing an error, as long as they think it may conduce to give me spirit in an undertaking that may not be wholly useless to the public and to posterity. But perhaps another little story which I have in my memory, may serve to represent my situation better.

There was a certain carpenter in a little town of Silesia, who was famous for dispatch and skill in his craft: he was besides a man of a most facetious fancy, and would often amuse himself with contriving curious and whimsical machines. It happened that

a king of Bohemia was wounded in battle near the place where he lived: the carpenter was immediately employed to construct a kind of cradle, in which his majesty might be transported to his palace with ease and safety. The poor man was so elated with the honour done to his professional abilities, that he fairly lost his reason. In his disturbed imagination, he conceived that Jupiter had given him a job, which was to construct another globe that should be free from the inconveniences to which that which had already been formed by himself was so liable, as he had it in contemplation to substitute a more virtuous race of mortals, that would deserve a better accommodation. This poor fellow became in the end so crazy, that when he was sent for to put up a neighbour's door, or mend his elbow-chair, he would return for answer, that until he had chiselled out his new city in the place of Grand Cairo, he could not possibly attend to any other business. Now the conceit with which I am possessed, is not unlike that of the crazy carpenter, with this difference, that whereas he supposed himself employed by Jupiter to construct a new globe on a superior principle, it is my humour to imagine myself deputed to hammer out a new and worthier race of mortals to inhabit it when it shall be ready for their reception.

With these notions in my head, I set off a few days ago for this metropolis, where I am lodged in the house of a turner, in which the OLIVE-BRANCHES have occasionally resided for this century back, and where my great-grandfather bought his favourite tobacco-stopper, but which has at present no other recommendations. They lay claim here also to the honour of having built my mother's great chair; but as this important fact has no place in our family records, I am very much inclined to doubt its authen

ticity, although it is very certain, that, among my landlord's curiosities, the most valuable article is a real undoubted splinter of a walking-stick, that was many years in the possession of Mr. Isaac Olivebranch, the father of my great-grandfather, and the author of those original observations which appeared in my 17th Number.

The morning after my arrival in this city, having substituted a pair of buckles in the place of my old ones, that savoured less of the middle ages, and having at once covered the family cut of my frock, and given a decent consistency to my little mummy frame, by the help of a common blue surtout coat, and all this to prevent my being pointed out as Old Simon, the Northamptonshire parson, I sallied forth with a fine sun over my head, determined to lounge away the morning in the streets of this capital. A long time had now elapsed since my visit to London; but as my mind has always been pretty much peopled, and my thoughts accustomed to the contemplation of crowded scenes and active life, and turned, by a natural bias, towards the human kind, I did not experience those bewildering emotions, that confusion of ideas, that mental trouble, and that sinking sense of comparative insignificance, which some of the most retired of my country neighbours have represented themselves to have felt in walking through the streets of London, after a long rustication. It is pretty certain that most men feel their personal consequence die away in crowded resorts, unless they themselves bear a principal part in them, or by some means or other have extended their connections over a very considerable range. When we have once raised ourselves, however, to this elevation, the very reverse of these effects will be the consequence: and the greater the crowd, the business, and the stir there is about us, the more we feel our consequence advanced,