So in his Country's dying face

He looked and lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,

With hardened sneer he turned away:

And coolly to his own soul said ;—
"Do you not think that we might make
A poem on her when she's dead :-
Or, no-a thought is in my head-
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take.

"My wife wants one.-Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you,
My dearest soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,-
Ay-and at last desert me too."

And so his Soul would not be gay,

But moaned within him; like a fawn
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.

As troubled skies stain waters clear,

The storm in Peter's heart and mind
Now made his verses dark and queer:
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.

For he now raved enormous folly,

Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,
"Twould make George Colman melancholy,
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chaunting those stupid staves.

agonising death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long poem in blank verse, published within a few years. That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion of a penetrating but panic-stricken understanding. The author might have derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet and sublime verses.

This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she' shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.

1 Nature.

Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote for freedom,
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which soothes tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed 'em.

"He was a man, too great to scan ;-
A planet lost in truth's keen rays:—
His virtue, awful and prodigious ;-
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days."

As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
"Eureka! I have found the way
To make a better thing of metre
Than e'er was made by living creature
Up to this blessed day."

Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;-
In one of which he meekly said:
"May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy daughter,

May Rapine and Famine,

Thy gorge ever cramming,

Glut thee with living and dead!

"May death and damnation,
And consternation,

Flit up from hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,

Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;

Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.

"Let thy body-guard yeomen

Hew down babes and women,

And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent,
When Moloch in Jewry,

Munched children with fury,

It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent."

It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and Peter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than Peter, because he pollutes a holy and now unconquerable cause with the principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one ridiculous and odious.

If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied in the moral perversion laid to their charge.

PART THE SEVENTH.

DOUBLE DAMNATION.

THE Devil now knew his proper cue.-
Soon as he read the ode, he drove
To his friend Lord Mac Murderchouse's,
A man of interest in both houses,

"

And said: "For money or for love,

Pray find some cure or sinecure;

To feed from the superfluous taxes,

A friend of ours-a poet-fewer

Have fluttered tamer to the lure

Than he." His lordship stands and racks his

Stupid brains, while one might count

As many beads as he had boroughs,-
At length replies; from his mean front,
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:

"It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require
No pledge from you, that he will stir
In our affairs;-like Oliver,

That he'll be worthy of his hire."

These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the Devil hied,-
Took to his bed; he had no cough,
No doctor,-meat and drink enough,-
Yet that same night he died.

The Devil's corpse was leaded down ;
His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,
Mourning-coaches, many a one,
Followed his hearse along the town:-
Where was the Devil himself?

When Peter heard of his promotion,

His eyes grew like two stars for bliss There was a bow of sleek devotion, Engendering in his back; each motion Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.

He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
With sifted gravel neatly laid,-
As if defying all who said,
Peter was ever poor.

But a disease soon struck into

The very life and soul of Peter-
He walked about-slept-had the hue
Of health upon his cheeks-and few
Dug better-none a heartier eater

And yet a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and day,
Month after month the thing grew worse,
And deadlier than in this my verse,
I can find strength to say.

Peter was dull-he was at first

Dull-O, so dull-so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsedStill with this dulness was he cursedDull-beyond all conception-dull.

No one could read his books-no mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him;

The parson came not near his portal;

His state was like that of the immortal

Described by Swift-no man could bear him.

His sister, wife, and children yawned,
With a long, slow, and drear ennui,

All human patience far beyond;

Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned. Anywhere else to be.

But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dulness was
Concentred and compressed so close,
"Twould have made Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.

A printer's boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one side;
Like those famed seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful frenzy's vigil rages,

As opiates, were the same applied.

Even the Reviewers who were hired

To do the work of his reviewing, With adamantine nerves, grew tired ;Gaping and torpid they retired,

To dream of what they should be doing.

And worse and worse, the drowsy curse
Yawned in him till it grew a pest-
A wide contagious atmosphere,
Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect and to infest.

His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;

The woods and lakes, so beautiful,
Of dim stupidity were full,

All grew dull as Peter's self.

The earth under his feet-the springs,
Which lived within it a quick life,
The air, the winds of many wings,
That fan it with new murmurings,
Were dead to their harmonious strife.

The birds and beasts within the wood,
The insects, and each creeping thing,
Were now a silent multitude;

Love's work was left unwrought-no brood
Near Peter's house took wing.

And every neighbouring cottager
Stupidly yawned upon the other:
No jack-ass brayed; no little cur
Cocked up

his ears;-no man would stir To save a dying mother.

Yet all from that charmed district went
But some half-idiot and half-knave,

Who rather than pay any rent,
Would live with marvellous content,
Over his father's grave.

No bailiff dared within that space,

For fear of the dull charm, to enter;

A man would bear upon his face,
For fifteen months, in any case,

The yawn of such a venture.