Their altar was the flowery lap of earth –
The starry empyreum their vast temple-
Their book, each other's eyes

and Love himself,

Parson, and Clerk, and Father to the bride!-
Holy espousals! whereat wept with joy
The spirit of the Universe.-In sooth
There was a sort of drizzling rain that day,
For I remember (having left at home
My parapluie, a name than umbrella
Far more expressive,) that I stood for shelter
Under an entry not twelve paces off,

(It might be ten,) from sheriff Waithman's shop,
For half an hour or more, and there I mused,
(Mine eyes upon the running kennel fixed,
That hurried on a het'rogenous mass
To th' common-sewer, its dark reservoir,)
I mused upon the running stream of life.

But that's not much to th' purpose-I was telling
Of those most pure espousals. - Innocent pair!
Ye were not shackled by the vulgar chains
About the yielding mind of credulous youth,
Wound by the nurse and priest,
Your unsophisticated impulses,

your energies,

Taught ye to soar above their "settled rules

Of Vice and Virtue."- Fairest creature!

He

Whom the world called thy husband, was in truth

Unworthy of thee.-A dull plodding wretch!

With whose ignoble nature, thy free spirit

Held no communion. - 'Twas well done, fair creature!
T'assert the independence of a mind

Created-generated I would say

Free as" that chartered libertine, the air."
Joy to thy chosen partner!—blest exchange!
Work of mysterious sympathy! that drew
Your kindred souls by

*

*

There fled the noblest spirit'-the most pure,
Most sublimated essence that e'er dwelt

In earthly tabernacle. Gone thou art,
Exhaled, dissolved, diffused, commingled now
Into and with the all-absorbing frame

Of Nature the great mother. Ev'n in life,
While still pent up in flesh and skin, and bones,
My thoughts and feelings like electric flame
Shot through the solid mass, towards their source,
And blended with the general elements,
When thy young star o'er life's horizon hung
Far from its zenith yet, low lagging clouds

(Vapours of earth) obscured its heav'n-born rays-
Dull fogs of prejudice and superstition,
And vulgar decencies begirt thee round;
And thou didst wear awhile th' unholy bonds
Of "holy matrimony!"-and didst vail

Awhile thy lofty spirit to the cheat.-
But reason came- and firm philosophy,

And mild philanthropy, and pointed out
The shame it was- -the crying, crushing shame,
To curb within a little paltry pale

The love that over all created things
Should be diffusivé as the atmosphere.
Then did thy boundless tenderness expand
Over all space-all animated things,
And things inanimate. Thou hadst a heart,
A ready tear for all-The dying whale,

Stranded and gasping―ripped up for his blubber,
By Man, the tyrant-The small sucking pig
Slain for his riot-The down-trampled flower,
Crushed by his cruel foot-All, each and all
Shared in thy boundless sympathies, and then-
(Sublime perfection of perfected love)
Then didst thou spurn the whimp'ring wailing thing
That dared to call thee "husband," and to claim,
As her just right, support and love from thee,-
Then didst thou * * * * * * *

*

* *

Little brother Johnny made ye,
Come, ye little cunning jade ye,
Come and see what I've got here,
In my pocket, pretty dear!
What! and won't ye come no higher?

Want to go to aunt Marier?

Want to go to

*

*

* *

*

Oh! lay me when I die

Hard by

*

Up from that babbling brook
The little Naiad's look,

Heaving up round white shoulders,
That dazzle all beholders,

And then so graceful glide they,
Some crablike (sidling) sideway;

That little babbling brook, where you Then on the bank I mention,

and I

Have sat, and sauntered many a sum-
mer's day,

Scenting the sweet soft hay;
There let me lay,

For there young mincing May
Comes first with mouth so meek,
And pale peach-coloured cheek,
And little naked feet,

That go pit pat,

And all that,

Tripping among the sweet

Daisies and violets,

And pale primroses;

Like turtles at Ascension,

In heaps they're all a laying,
And then with pretty playing,
One, like a frightened otter,
Flopps down into the water;
The rest they flounce in a'ter-
Then some, with pea-green blushes,
Hide in amongst the rushes,
And one lies shamming sleep,.
And one squeaks out "bo peep
And one raised head doth peer
Out with a laughing leer;
And then pops up another;
Another and another;

And there she comes and sits Then they pretend to smother,

A tying up of posies

Fit for immortal noses

To sniff unto, and there
With silky swaling pair,

And iv'ry hands that wring it,
And to the zephyrs fling it,

A titt'ring talk coquettish,
Then with affected wonder,

And feigned frowns so pettish,
Like ducks they dive down under,
Then through the gurgling water,
To look and see

*

* * * *

Che Night Walker.*

'Midnight! yet not a nose, from Tower Hill to Piccadilly, snored!”

In a crowded and highly cultivated state of society, like that of London, the race of exertion against time is incessant. Take a distant village, although a populous one, (as in Devonshire or Cornwall,) and even discord, during the hours of darkness, is found forgetting herself in rest. The last alehouse closes before the clock strikes ten, sending the very scapegraces of the hamlet, in summer, to bed by daylight; no lady would choose, after curfew hour, (even by beating her husband,) to disturb her neighbours; and, unless some tailor happens to be behindhand with a wedding pair of small clothes; or some housewife prolongs the washing-day, and gives an extra hour to her lace caps; or unless the village be a Post-stage, where the "first-turn-boy" must sleep in his spurs; or where, the mail changing horses, some one sits up to give the guard his glass of rum, no movable probably like a lighted candle is known to such a community from eleven o'clock on the Saturday night to six o'clock on the Monday morning. In London, however, the course of affairs is widely different. As the broad glare of gas drives darkness even from our alleys, so multitudinous avocations keep rest for ever from our streets. By an arrangement the opposite to that of Queen Penelope, it is during the night that the work of regeneration in our great capital goes on; it is by night that the great reservoirs which feed London and Westminster, repair the vast expenditure which they make during the day. As the wants of twelve hundred thousand persons are not ministered to with a wet finger, this operation of replenishment does not proceed in silence. Its action is best observable (as regards the season) towards the end of spring; when, the town being at the fullest, the markets are most abundantly supplied. Then, every succeeding hour of the four-and-twenty, brings its peculiar business to be performed, and sets its peculiar agents into motion.

Between half past eleven and twelve o'clock at night, the sev*From Blackwood for November, 1823.-M.

eral theatres of the metropolis discharge themselves of their loads; and at that hour it is (unless the House of Commons happens to sit late) that the last flush of pa engers is seen in the streets of London. The forth-rushing multitudes of CoventGarden and Drury-Lane pass westward, in divisions, by King Street and Leicesterfields-eastward, by Catherine Street, the Strand, and Temple Bar; they are crossed at the points of Blackfriars, and St. Martin's Lane, by the Middlesex-dwelling visitors of Astley's and the Circus, and may be distinguished from the chance travellers (pedestrians) of the same direction, by their quick step, hilarious mood, and, still more, by that style of shouldering in which Englishmen, when they walk in a body, always indulge towards the single-handed. About this time, too, the hackney horses put their best feet (where there is a choice) foremost; knowing of old, that, whence comes one lash, there as easily come two. The less public and more peaceful districts of town are next flattered for some twenty minutes by the loud knocks of coachmen, occasionally commuted into "touches of the bell," for the sake of "the lodgers," or "the children,” or, sometimes, "the old lady opposite." And before the stroke of midnight, in these comparatively pacific regions, the tom-cats and the watchmen reign with undisputed sway.

In the greater thoroughfares of London, however, and especially about Fleet Street and the Strand, the tumult of evening does not subside so easily. From twelve, by Paul's clock, until after two in the morning, the Gates of the Temple, and the nooks under St. Dunstan's Church; the corners of Bell Yard, Star Court, and Chancery Lane; the doors of the Rainbow, the Cock, and the other minor coffee-houses of Fleet Street, are beset by habitual idlers, or late-stirring "professional people," members of spouting-clubs, and second-rate actors,— barristers without law, and medical students guiltless of physic; besides these, there flourish a set of City "choice spirits," who can't get so far west as "Pedley's Oyster-rooms," or "The Saloon," in Piccadilly, but must take their "lark" (moving homewards) between the Adelphi Theatre and Whitechapel; and now-andthen, perhaps, some grocer of Farringdon falls (vino gravidus) into the irregularity of a "set-to," and pays thirty shillings,