A letter and free-bring it here,

I have no correspondent who franks. No! yes! can it be? Why, my dear,

'Tis our glorious, our Protestant Bankes. "Dear sir, as I know you desire

That the Church should receive due protection I humbly presume to require

Your aid at the Cambridge election.

"It has lately been brought to my knowledge,
That the Ministers fully design

To suppress each cathedral and college,
And eject every learned divine.

To assist this detestable scheme

Three nuncios from Rome are come over; They left Calais on Monday by steam,

And landed to dinner at Dover.

"An army of grim Cordeliers,

Well furnish'd with relics and vermin,
Will follow, Lord Westmoreland fears,
To effect what their chiefs may determine.
Lollards' tower, good authorities say,
Is again fitting up as a prison;
And a wood-merchant told me to-day
'Tis a wonder how faggots have risen.

"The finance-scheme of Canning contains A new Easter-offering tax:

And he means to devote all the gains

To a bounty on thumb-screws and racks. Your living, so neat and compact—

Pray, don't let the news give you pain? Is promised, I know for a fact,

To an olive-faced padre from Spain."

I read, and I felt my heart bleed,
Sore wounded with horror and pity;
So I flew, with all possible speed,

To our Protestant champion's committee.
True gentlemen, kind and well bred!

No fleering! no distance! no scorn! They asked after my wife who is dead, And my children who never were born.

They then, like high-principled Tories,

Called our Sovereign unjust and unsteady,
And assailed him with scandalous stories,
Till the coach for the voters was ready.
That coach might be well called a casket
Of learning and brotherly love:

There were parsons in boot and in basket;
There were parsons below and above.

There were Sneaker and Griper, a pair
Who stick to Lord Mulesby like leeches;
A smug chaplain of plausible air,

Who writes my Lord Goslingham's speeches. Dr. Buzz, who alone is a host,

Who, with arguments weighty as lead,

Proves six times a week in the Post
That flesh somehow differs from bread.

Dr. Nimrod, whose orthodox toes

Are seldom withdrawn from the stirrup.
Dr. Humdrum, whose eloquence flows,
Like droppings of sweet poppy syrup;
Dr. Rosygill puffing and fanning,

And wiping away perspiration;
Dr. Humbug, who proved Mr. Canning
The beast in St. John's Revelation.

A layman can scarce form a notion
Of our wonderful talk on the road;
Of the learning, the wit, and devotion,
Which almost each syllable show'd:
Why, divided allegiance agrees

So ill with our free constitution;
How Catholics swear as they please,
In hope of the priest's absolution:

How the Bishop of Norwich had barter'd
His faith for a legate's commission;
How Lyndhurst, afraid to be martyr'd,
Had stooped to a base coalition;
How Papists are cased from compassion
By bigotry, stronger than steel;

How burning would soon come in fashion,
And how very bad it must feel.

We were all so much touched and excited
By a subject so direly sublime,
That the rules of politeness were slighted,
And we all of us talked at a time;

And in tones, which each moment grew louder,
Told how we should dress for the show,
And where we should fasten the powder,
And if we should bellow or no.

Thus from subject to subject we ran,
And the journey pass'd pleasantly o'er,
Till at last Dr. Humdrum began:

From that time I remember no more.
At Ware he commenced his prelection,
In the dullest of clerical drones:
And when next I regained recollection

We were rumbling o'er Trumpington stones.

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.

(1802-1839.)

LXIII. THE RED FISHERMAN; OR, THE DEVIL'S DECOY.

Published in Knight's Annual.

THE Abbot arose, and closed his book,
And donned his sandal shoon,

And wandered forth alone, to look

Upon the summer moon:

A starlight sky was o'er his head,

A quiet breeze around;

And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed
And the waves a soothing sound:

It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught
But love and calm delight;

Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought
On his wrinkled brow that night.

He gazed on the river that gurgled by,
But he thought not of the reeds.

He clasped his gilded rosary,

But he did not tell the beads;

If he looked to the heaven, 't was not to invoke
The Spirit that dwelleth there;

If he opened his lips, the words they spoke
Had never the tone of prayer.

A pious priest might the Abbot seem,

He had swayed the crozier well;

But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream,
The Abbot were loth to tell.

Companionless, for a mile or more,
He traced the windings of the shore.
Oh beauteous is that river still,

As it winds by many a sloping hill,
And many a dim o'erarching grove,
And many a flat and sunny cove,
And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades
The honeysuckle sweetly shades,
And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers,
So gay they are with grass and flowers!
But the Abbot was thinking of scenery
About as much, in sooth,

As a lover thinks of constancy,

Or an advocate of truth.

He did not mark how the skies in wrath
Grew dark above his head;

He did not mark how the mossy path
Grew damp beneath his tread;
And nearer he came, and still more near,
To a pool, in whose recess

The water had slept for many a year,

Unchanged and motionless;
From the river stream it spread away

The space of half a rood;

The surface had the hue of clay

And the scent of human blood;

The trees and the herbs that round it grew

Were venomous and foul,

And the birds that through the bushes flew

Were the vulture and the owl;

The water was as dark and rank

As ever a Company pumped,

And the perch that was netted and laid on the bank

Grew rotten while it jumped;

And bold was he who thither came

At midnight, man or boy,

For the place was cursed with an evil name,

And that name was "The Devil's Decoy"!