You've read all their names in the news I suppose,
But for fear you have not, take the list as it goes:
There was Lady Greasewrister,

And Madam Van Twister,

Her Ladyship's sister;

Lord Cram and Lord Vulter,
Sir Brandish O'Culter,
With Marshal Carouser,

And old Lady Drouser,

And the great Hanoverian Baron Pansmouser,
Besides many others who all in the rain went
On purpose to honour this grand entertainment.
The company made a most brilliant appearance,
And ate bread and butter with great perseverance;
All the chocolate, too, that my lord set before 'em
The ladies despatched with the utmost decorum;
And had I a voice that was stronger than steel,
With twice fifty tongues to express what I feel,
And as many good mouths, yet I never could utter
All the speeches my lord made to Lady Bunbutter!
Now why should the Muse, my dear mother, relate
The misfortunes that fall to the lot of the great?
As homeward we came-'tis with sorrow you'll hear
What a dreadful disaster attended the peer:

In landing old Lady Bumfidget and daughter
This obsequious lord tumbled into the water;

But a nymph of the flood brought him safe to the boat,
And I left all the ladies a cleaning his coat.

A worst disaster than that which befel Lord Ragamuffin is in store for our good-humoured letter-writer. His friend, Captain Cormorant, who by the way turns out to be no captain at all, and who had undertaken, amongst other fashionable accomplishments, to initiate him in the mysteries of lansquenet, cheats him out of seven hundred pounds; so that Miss Jenny loses her lover and her cousin his money at one stroke. Prudence and Tabitha also come in for their share of misadventures; and the whole party return, crestfallen and discomfited, to the good old Lady Blunderhead and their Yorkshire Manor House.

XXVI.

AMERICAN POETS.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER-FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

I DID a great injustice the other day when I said that the Americans had at last a great poet. I should have remembered that poets, like sorrows,

"Come not single spies

But in battalions."

There is commonly a flight of those singing-birds, as we had ourselves at the beginning of the present century; and besides Professor Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Lowell, and Poe do the highest honour to America.

The person, however, whom I should have most injured myself in forgetting, for my injustice could not damage a reputation such as his, was John G. Whittier, the most intensely national of American bards.

Himself a member of the Society of Friends, the two most remarkable of his productions are on subjects in which that active although peaceful sect take a lively interest: the antislavery cause, in the present day; and the persecution of the Quakers, which casts such deep disgrace on the memory of the Pilgrim Fathers and their immediate successors in the early history of New England.

Strange it seems to us in this milder age, that these men, themselves flying from the intolerance of the Old Country, should, the moment they attained to anything like power, nay even whilst disputing with the native Indians, not the possession of the soil, but the mere privilege of dwelling peaceably therein, at once stiffened themselves into a bigotry and a persecution not excelled by the horrors of the Star Chamber! should, as soon as they attained the requisite physical force, chase and scourge, and burn and sell their fellow-creatures into slavery, for that very exercise of private judgment on religious subjects, that very determination to interpret freely the Book of Life, which had driven themselves into exile! Oh! many are the causes of thankfulness which we owe to the

Providence that cast us upon a more enlightened age; but for nothing ought we more devoutly to render thanks to God than that in our days the deeds recited in Mr. Whittier's splendid ballad of "Cassandra Southcote" would be impossible.

His poem itself can scarcely be overrated. The march of the verse has something that reminds us of the rhythm of Mr. Macaulay's fine classical ballads, something which is resemblance, not imitation; whilst in the tone of mind of the author, his earnestness, his eloquence, his pathos, there is much that resembles the constant force and occasional beauty of Ebenezer Elliot. Whilst equally earnest, however, and equally eloquent, there is in Mr. Whittier, not only a more sustained, but a higher tone than that of the Corn-law Rhymer. It would indeed be difficult to tell the story of a terrible oppression and a merciful deliverance, a deliverance springing from the justice, the sympathy, the piety of our countrymen, the English captains, with more striking effect. I transcribe the prose introduction, which is really necessary to render such an outrage credible, although one feels intuitively that the story must have been true, precisely because it was too strangely wicked for fiction.

"This ballad has its foundation upon a somewhat remarkable event in the history of Puritan intolerance. Two young persons, son and daughter of Lawrence Southwick, of Salem, who had himself been imprisoned and deprived of all his property for having entertained two Quakers at his house, were fined ten pounds each for non-attendance at church, which they were unable to pay. The case being represented to the General Court at Boston, that body issued an order which may still be seen on the court records, bearing the signature of Edward Rawson, Secretary, by which the Treasurer of the County was 'fully empowered to sell the said persons to any of the English nation at Virginia or Barbadoes to answer said fines.' An attempt was made to carry this barbarous order into execution, but no shipmaster was found willing to convey them to the West Indies. Vide Sewall's History, pp. 225-6, G. Bishop."

To the God of all true mercies let my blessing rise to-day,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away,-
Yea, He, who cooled the furnace around the faithful three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His handmaid free!

Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars,
Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars,
In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night time,
My grated window whitened with autumn's early rime.

Alone in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by;
Star after star looked palely in, and sank adown the sky;
No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea.

All night I sate unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow
The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow,
Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for and sold
Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold!
Oh the weakness of the flesh was there, the shrinking and the shame;
And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to me came:
"Why sittst thou thus forlornly?" the wicked murmur said,
"Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy maiden bed?

"Where be the smiling faces and voices soft and sweet
Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant street?
Where be the youths, whose glances the summer Sabbath through
Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew?

"Why sittst thou here, Cassandra? Bethink thee with what mirth
Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm bright hearth;
How the crimson shadows tremble, on foreheads white and fair,
On eyes of merry girlhood half hid in golden hair.

"Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken;

Not for thee the nuts of Wenham Woods by laughing boys are broken; No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid,

For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful rustics braid.

"O weak deluded maiden! by crazy fancies led,

With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread ;

To leave a wholesome worship and teaching pure and sound,

And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and sackcloth bound.

"Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who mock at things divine,
Who rail against the pulpit and holy bread and wine,
Sore from their cart-tail scourgings and from the pillory lame,
Rejoicing in their wretchedness and glorying in their shame.

"And what a fate awaits thee? a sadly toiling slave,
Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage to the grave!
Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless thrall,
The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all!"

Oh !-ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble nature's fears
Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing tears,
I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in silent prayer,
To feel-oh Helper of the weak! that Thou indeed wert there!

I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell,

And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison shackles fell,
Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's robe of white,
And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight.

Slow broke the grey cold morning, again the sunshine fell
Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell;
The hoar-frost matted on the wall, and upward from the street
Came careless laugh and idle word and tread of passing feet.

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast,
And slowly at the sheriff's side up the long street I passed;
I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see,
How from every door and window the people gazed on me.

We paused at length where at my feet the sunlit waters broke
On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock;
The merchants' ships lay idly there in hard clear lines on high
Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky.

And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold,
And grim and stout sea-captains, with faces bronzed and old,
And on his horse with Rawson, his cruel clerk at hand,

Sate dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land.

[read

But grey heads shook, and young brows knit, the while the sheriff
That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made.
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood bring
No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering.

Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff turning said:
"Which of ye worthy seamen will take this Quaker maid?
In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's shore,

You may hold her at a higher price than Indian girl or Moor."
Grim and silent stood the captains; and when again he cried,
"Speak out, my worthy seamen !" no voice or sign replied;
But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind words met my ear ;-
"God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl and dear!"
A weight seemed lifted off my heart-a pitying friend was nigh,
I felt it in his hard rough hand, I saw it in his eye;
And when again the sheriff spake, that voice so kind to me
Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea.

Pile my ship with bars of silver-pack with coins of Spanish gold
From keelpiece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold,
By the living God who made me! I would sooner in yon bay
Sink ship and crew and cargo than bear this child away!"

"Well answered, worthy captain; shame on their cruel laws!" Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's just applause. "Like the herdsman of Tekoa in Israel of old

Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold?"