signifying an army. In England, is not a soldier synonymous with a lobster?

"In the progress of maritime industry along the shores of southern, and subsequently of northern Europe, we find a love for freedom to grow up with a fondness for fish. Enterprise and liberty flourished among the islands of the Archipelago. And when Naples was to be rescued from thraldom, it was the hardy race of watermen who plied in her beauteous bay that rose at Freedom's call to effect her deliverance, when she basked for one short hour in its full sunshine under the gallant Masaniello.

"As to the commercial grandeur, of which a constant demand for fish was the creating principle, to illustrate its importance, I need only refer to a remarkable expression of that deep politician and exceedingly clever economist Charles V., when, on a progress through a part of his dominions (for the sun at that period never went down on the territories of the Catholic king), he happened to pass through Amsterdam, in company with the Queen of Hungary: on that occasion, being complimented in the usual form by the burgomasters of his faithful city, he asked to see the mausoleum of John Bachalen, the famous herringbarreller; but when told that his grave, simple and unadorned, lay in his native island in the Zuydersee, 'What!' cried the illustrious visitor, 'is it thus that my people of the Netherlands shew their gratitude to so

the wooden walls of Old England, instead of crumbling into so much rotten timber, would be converted into so many huge wooden spoons to feed the population.

"It has been sweetly sung, as well as wisely said, by a genuine English writer, that

'Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark, unfathom'd caves of ocean bear.'

To these undiscovered riches Lent would point the national eye, and direct the national energies. Very absurd would then appear the forebodings of the croakers, who with some plausibility now predict the approach of national bankruptcy and famine. Time enough to think of that remote contingency, when the sea shall be exhausted of its live bullion, and the abyss shall cry Hold, enough!' Time enough to fear a general stoppage, when the run on the Dogger Bank shall have produced a failure-when the shoals of the teeming north shall have refused to meet their engagements in the sunny waters of the south, and the drafts of the net shall have been dishonoured.

"I am one of the many modern admirers of Edmund Burke; for in his speech on American conciliation, he has an argumentum piscatorium quite to my fancy. Tolle! lege!

"As to the wealth which these colonies have derived from the sea by their fisheries, you had all

that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought these acquisitions of value; for they even seemed to excite your envy. And yet the spirit with which that enterprising employment has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? Look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on their fishery. While we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and penetrating into the deepest recesses of Hudson's Bay; while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold,—that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know, that while some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the shores of Brazil: no sea that is not vexed by their fisheries, no climate that is not witness to their toils!'

-Such glorious imaginings, such beatific dreams, would (I speak advisedly) be realised in these coun

"

tries by Lent's magic spell; and I have no doubt. that our patriot King, the patron of so many very questionable reforms, will see the propriety of restoring the laws of Elizabeth in this matter. Stanislaus, the late pious king of Lorraine, so endeared himself to his subjects in general, and to the market-gardeners in particular, by his sumptuary regulations respecting vegetable diet in Lent, that, in the hortus siccus of Nancy, the metropolis, his statue has been placed, with an appropriate inscription:

'Vitales inter succos herbasque salubres,

Quàm benè stat populi vita salusque sui!'

"A similar compliment would await his present Majesty from the shipowners and the worshipful Fishmongers' Company,' if he should adopt the suggestion thrown out here. He would figure colossally in your new Trafalgar-square, pointing with his trident to the Hungerford Market. The three-pronged instrument in his hand would be a most appropriate emblem, (much more so than on the pinnacle of the new Buckingham Palace,) since it would signify equally well the fork with which he fed his people, and the sceptre with which he ruled the world.

'Le trident de Neptune est le sceptre du monde!'

Then would be solved the grand problem of the cornlaw question. Hitherto my Lord Fitzwilliam has

taken nothing by his motions, and I say deservedly; for, by infringing on that national code, the collision between the hostile elements of the state, inevitable at some distant period, would be made immediate and imminent. But were Lent proclaimed at Charing Cross and Temple Bar, and through the markettowns of England, a speedy fall in the price of grazing stock, though it might afflict Lord Althorp, would eventually harmonise the jarring interests of agriculture and manufacturing industry. The superabundant population of the farming districts would crowd to the coast, and find employment in the fisheries; while the table of Devonshire House would repudiate for a time the huge sirloin, and receive as a substitute the ponderous turbot, your Spitalfields weaver would exhibit on his frugal board salt ling flanked with potatoes. A salutary taste for fish would be created in the inmost recesses of the island, and an epoch most beneficial to the country would take date from that enactment.

'Omne quum Proteus pecus egit altos
Visere montes.'

Nor need the landlords take alarm. People would not plough the ground less because they might plough the deep more; and while smiling Ceres would still walk through our isle with her horn of plenty, Thetis would follow in her train with a rival cornucopia.