And over the hill, and over the dale,

He walk'd, and over the plain;

And backwards and forwards he switch'd his long tail,

As a gentleman switches his cane.

And pray how was the Devil drest?

O! he was in his Sunday's best;

His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,

With a little hole behind, where his tail came through.

He saw a lawyer killing a viper,

On a dunghill, beside his own stable;

And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind

Of Cain and his brother Abel.

An apothecary, on a white horse,

Rode by on his avocations

"Oh!" says the Devil," there's my old friend Death in the revelations !"

He saw a cottage, with a double coach-house;

A cottage of gentility!

And the Devil was pleased, for his darling vice
Is the pride that apes humility.

He stepp'd into a rich bookseller's shop;
Says he, "We are both of one college;
For I, myself, sat, like a cormorant, once,
Hard by, on the Tree of Knowledge."

As he pass'd through Cold-Bath-Fields, he saw
A solitary cell:

And the Devil was charm'd, for it gave him a hint

For improving the prisons of hell.

He saw a turnkey in a trice

Fetter a troublesome jade;

"Ah! nimble," quoth he, " do the fingers move When they're used to their trade."

He saw the same turnkey unfetter the same,
But with little expedition;

And the Devil thought on the long debates

On the Slave Trade Abolition.

Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide,

A pig, with vast celerity!

And the Devil grinn'd, for he saw all the while
How it cut its own throat, and he thought, with a smile,
Of" England's commercial prosperity!"

He saw a certain minister

(A minister to his mind) Go up into a certain house, With a majority behind.

The Devil quoted Genesis,

Like a very learned clerk,

How "Noah, and his creeping things,
Went up into the ark!"

General Gascoigne's burning face

He saw with consternation,

And back to Hell his way did take;

For the Devil thought, by a slight mistake,

'Twas the General Conflagration!1

One evening, at the house of the late Dr. Vincent, Professor Porson, being cut out at a whist table, was about to take his leave. Mrs. Vincent pressed him to stay, saying, "I know you will not stay, if you are doing nothing; but the rubber will soon be over, when you may go in; and, in the meantime, take a pen and ink at another table, and write us some verses." Dr. Vincent, in the midst of the game, seconded this request, and added, "I will give a subject. You shall suppose that the Devil is come up among us, to see what we are doing, and you shall tell us what observations he makes." Porson obeyed these injunctions, and this amusing jeud'esprit was the result. The Devil's Walk, with additions, has been claimed also for Coleridge and Southey.

DELIA'S POCKET HANDKERCHIEF.1

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

IS mine! what accents can my joy declare?
Blest be the pressure of the thronging rout!
Blest be the hand so hasty of my fair,
That left the tempting corner hanging out.

I envy not the joy the pilgrim feels
After long travel to some distant shrine,
When at the relic of his saint he kneels-
For Delia's pocket-handkerchief is mine.

When first with filching fingers I drew near,
Keen hope shot tremulous through every vein ;
And when the finish'd deed removed my fear,
Scarce could my bounding heart its joy contain.

What tho' the eighth commandment rose to mind,
It only served a moment's qualm to move ;
For thefts like this it could not be design'd-
The eighth commandment was not made for love!

Here when she took the macaroons from me,
She wiped her mouth to clean the crumbs so sweet ;
Dear napkin! yes, she wiped her lips in thee!

Lips sweeter than the macaroons she eat.

This is one of the "Love Elegies of Abel Shufflebottom."

And when she took that pinch of Macabaw,
That made my love so delicately sneeze,
Thee to her Roman nose applied I saw,
And thou art doubly dear for things like these.

No washerwoman's filthy hand shall e'er,
Sweet pocket-handkerchief! thy worth profane;
For thou hast touch'd the rubies of my fair,
And I will kiss thee o'er and o'er again.

A CONJUGAL CONUNDRUM.

[FROM PUNCH.]

HICH is of greater value, prythee, say,

The Bride or Bridegroom?-must the truth be told?

Alas, it must! The Bride is given away—

The Bridegroom's often regularly sold.

600

COOL REFLECTIONS.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

SPARE me-spare me, Phoebus! if, indeed,
Thou hast not let another Phaeton

Drive earthwards thy fierce steeds and fiery ear;
Mercy! I melt! I melt! no tree, no bush,

No shelter! not a breath of stirring air,

East, West, or North, or South! Dear god of day,
Put on thy nightcap! crop thy locks of light,
And be in the fashion! turn thy back upon us,
And let thy beams flow upward; make it night