DEATH, on a solemn night of state,
In all his pomp of terror sate:

The' attendants of his gloomy reign,

Diseases dire,-a ghastly train

Crowd the vast court! With hollow tone

A voice thus thunder'd from the throne:

"This night our minister we name; Let every servant speak his claim;

Merit shall bear this ebon wand."

All, at the word, stretch'd forth their hand.
Fever, with burning heat possess'd,
Advanced, and for the wand address'd:1
"I to the weekly bills appeal,
Let those express my fervent zeal;
On every slight occasion near,
With violence I persevere."

Next Gout appears with limping pace,
Pleads how he shifts from place to place;
From head to foot how swift he flies,
And every joint and sinew plies;
Still working when he seems suppress'd,
A most tenacious stubborn guest.2
A haggard Spectre from the crew
Crawls forth, and thus asserts his due:
""Tis I who taint the sweetest joy,
And in the shape of Love destroy:
My shanks, sunk eyes, and noseless face,
Prove my pretension to the place."

Stone urg'd his ever-growing force;
And next, Consumption's meagre corse,
With feeble voice, that scarce was heard,
Broke with short coughs, his suit preferr❜d:
"Let none object my lingering way,
I gain, like Fabius, by delay;

Fatigue and weaken every foe

By long attack, secure, though slow." 3

(1) Fever, the offspring of poverty and dirt, nursed by parochial neglect, pampered by intoxication, and at last buried at the public charge!

(2) Gout, the son of sloth and sensuality, half-brother to fever, and descended in many cases from the "haggard spectre" hereinafter named.

(3) This living death is seen, in its early stages, in manufacturing towns, where young bones and sinews, are dissolved into gold, with which the employers

Plague represents his rapid power,
Who thinn'd a nation in an hour.1

All spoke their claim, and hoped the wand.-
Now expectation hush'd the band,

When thus the Monarch from the throne:
"Merit was ever modest known.

What, no Physician speak his right!
None here! but fees their toils requite.2
Let then Intemperance take the wand,
Who fills with gold their zealous hand.
You, Fever, Gout, and all the rest,
(Whom wary men, as foes, detest)
Forego your claim; no more pretend;
Intemperance is esteem'd a friend.
He shares their mirth, their social joys,
And as a courted guest destroys:

The charge on him must justly fall,

Who finds employment for you all."3

purchase positions in parliament, where they prate about educating the ignorant, the rights of the poor, and enunciate principles of peace and charity!-Vide Minutes of the Factory System before the House of Commons, passim.

(1) Aided by fear, of course, for when the Plague promised the dervise, to slay only 30,000, and double that number fell, the disease exonerated itself from blame fairly, by declaring "fear killed the rest."

(2) Byron's epigram upon his doctor, applies to several cases :

"Youth, vigour, and relenting Jove

To keep my lamp in, vainly strove,
For Farinelli blew so stout

He beat all three, and blew it out!"

(3) This admirable but melancholy picture of the "thousand natural ills that flesh is heir to," is one of the finest efforts of our poet's muse, and the deduction is forcible and clear. If death stands behind the chair which health fills, and picks out guest after guest, at the banquet of life, he does so primarily in the garb of intemperance which, like Othello's murder, "slays where it doth love!" The man who, in youth, never did "add hot and rebellious liquors to his blood," has the surest guarantee that in age, "his pulse shall beat equal time, and keep a healthful music." To prove how human life may protract its span, we have only to review the self-denial and rigid rule of Cornaro, the early hours

of Parkhurst, the temperance of Parr, and to cut short its career, we have merely to mix the discontent of Unctius with the intemperance of Alexander, "and soon," to vary a little the lines of Sir Samuel Garth :

"Disease you'll find

Unto physicians only ever kind;

Who in return all diligence will pay,

To fix its empire, and confirm its sway!"

I cannot forbear appending a versified translation of Martial's epigram upon physicians: Mart. vi. 53.

"Andragoras bathd, supp'd well, and went to bed
Last night, but in the morning was found dead;
Would'st know, Faustinus, what was his disease?
He dreaming saw-the quack Hermocrates!"

A GARDENER of peculiar taste,
On a young Hog his favour placed,
Who fed not with the common herd;
His tray was to the hall preferr'd:
He wallow'd underneath the board,
Or in his master's chamber snored,
Who fondly stroked him every day,
And taught him all the puppy's play.