She makes silk purses,

broiders stools,

Sings sweetly, dances finely,

Paints screens, subscribes to Sunday-schools,

And sits a horse divinely.

But to be linked for life to her!

The desperate man who tried it

Might marry a Barometer
And hang himself beside it!

EVERY-DAY CHARACTERS

V

PORTRAIT OF A LADY

IN THE EXHIBITION OF THE ROYAL

ACADEMY

WHAT are you, Lady?—nought is here
To tell us of your name or story,
To claim the gazer's smile or fear,

To dub you Whig, or damn you Tory;
It is beyond a poet's skill

To form the slightest notion, whether We e'er shall walk through one quadrille, Or look upon one moon together.

You're very pretty!—all the world

Are talking of your bright brow's splendour, And of your locks, so softly curled,

And of your hands, so white and slender; Some think you're blooming in Bengal;

Some say you're blowing in the city;

Some know you're nobody at all:
I only feel-you're very pretty.

But bless my heart! it's very wrong;
You're making all our belles ferocious;
Anne "

never saw a chin so long;"

And Laura thinks your dress "atrocious;" And Lady Jane, who now and then

Is taken for the village steeple,

Is sure you can't be four feet ten,
And "wonders at the taste of people."

Soon pass the praises of a face;

Swift fades the very best vermillion;
Fame rides a most prodigious pace;
Oblivion follows on the pillion;
And all who in these sultry rooms

To-day have stared, and pushed, and

fainted,

Will soon forget your pearls and plumes,
As if they never had been painted.

You'll be forgotten-as old debts
By persons who are used to borrow;
Forgotten-as the sun that sets,

When shines a new one on the morrow;
Forgotten-like the luscious peach

That blessed the schoolboy last September; Forgotten—like a maiden speech,

Which all men praise, but none remember.

Yet, ere you sink into the stream

That whelms alike sage, saint, and martyr, And soldier's sword, and minstrel's theme, And Canning's wit, and Gatton's charter, Here, of the fortunes of your youth,

My fancy weaves her dim conjectures,
Which have, perhaps, as much of truth
As passion's vows, or Cobbett's lectures.

Was 't in the north or in the south

That summer breezes rocked your And had you in your baby mouth

A wooden or a silver ladle?

cradle?

And was your first unconscious sleep
By Brownie banned, or blessed by Fairy?
And did you wake to laugh or weep?

And were you christened Maud or Mary?

And was your father called "your grace"?
And did he bet at Ascot races ?
And did he chat at commonplace?
And did he fill a score of places?
And did your lady-mother's charms
Consist in picklings, broilings, bastings?
Or did she prate about the arms

Her brave forefathers wore at Hastings?

Where were you finished? tell me where!
Was it at Chelsea, or at Chiswick ?
Had you the ordinary share

Of books and backboard, harp and physic?

And did they bid you banish pride,

And mind your Oriental tinting?

And did

you learn how Dido died,

And who found out the art of printing?