The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 324, July 26, 1828

Of the liberty boys soon put her to flight.
And she dropp'd her mantle in her fright,
Which fell on Orator Shiel.

Thence sped she to the Land of Cakes,
The land she loves and its possessors;
She loves its Craniologists,
Political Economists,
And all Scotch mists and Scotch Professors.

And chiefly she on McCulloch smiled,
As a mother smiles on her darling child,
Or a lady on her lover;
Then, bethinking her of Parliament,
She hasten'd South, but ere she went,
She promised if nothing occurr'd to prevent,
To return when the Session was over.

    Blackwood's Magazine.

CANNIBALISM

In great cities, cannibalism takes an infinite variety of shapes. In the neighbourhood of St. James's-street there are numerous slaughter-houses, where men are daily consumed by the operation of cards and dice; and where they are caught by the same bait, at which Quin said he should have infallibly bitten. A similar process is likewise carried on in 'Change Alley, on a great scale; not to speak of that snare especially set for widows and children, called a "joint stock speculation." But your cannibal of cannibals is a parliament patron. Here, a great borough proprietor swallows a regiment at a single gulp; and there, the younger son of a lord ruminates over a colony till the very crows cannot find a dinner in it; and there again, a duke or a minister, himself and his family, having first "supped full of horrors," casts a diocese to the side-table, to be mumbled at leisure by his son's tutor. The town is occasionally very indignant and very noisy against the gouls of Surgeons' Hall, because they live upon the dead carcasses of their fellow-creatures; while, strange to say, it takes but little account of the hordes of wretches who openly, and in the face of day, hunt down living men in their nefarious dealings as porter brewers, quack doctors, informers, attorneys, manufacturers of bean flour, alum, and Portland stone; and torture their subjects like so many barbacued pigs, in the complicated processes of their cookery.—New Month. Mag.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

"They say this town is full of cozenage,
As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such like libertines of sin."

    SHAKSPEARE.
Caveat emptor! This is the age of fraud, imposture, substitution, transmutation, adulteration, abomination, contamination, and many others of the same sinister ending, always excepting purification. Every thing is debased and sophisticated, and "nothing is but what is not." All things are mixed, lowered, debased, deteriorated, by our cozening dealers and shopkeepers; and, bad as they are, there is every reason to fear that they are "mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem." We wonder at the increase of bilious and dyspeptic patients, at the number of new books upon stomach complaints, at the rapid fortunes made by practitioners who undertake (the very word is ominous) to cure indigestion; but how can it be otherwise, when Accum, before he took to quoting with his scissors, assured us there was "poison in the pot;" when a recent writer has shown that there are still more deleterious ingredients in the wine-bottle; and when we ourselves have all had dismal intestine evidence that our bread is partly made of ground bones, alum, plaster of Paris; our tea, of aloe-leaves; our beer, of injurious drugs; our milk, of snails and chalk; and that even the water supplied to us by our companies is any thing rather than the real Simon Pure it professes to be. Not less earnestly than benevolently do our quack doctors implore us to beware of spurious articles; Day and Martin exhort us not to take our polish from counterfeit blacking: every advertiser beseeches the "pensive public" to be upon its guard against supposititious articles—all, in short, is knavery, juggling, cheating, and deception.—Ibid.

Retrospective Gleanings

SONNET

BY HENRY TEONOE, A SEA CHAPLAIN IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES II

Composed October the First, over against the East part of Candia.

O! Ginnee was a bony lasse,
Which maks the world to woonder
How ever it should com to passe
That wee did part a sunder.

The driven snow, the rose so rare,
The glorious sunne above thee,
Can not with my Ginnee compare,
She was so wonderous lovely.

Her merry lookes, her forhead high,
Her hayre like golden-wyer,
Her hand and foote, her lipe or eye,
Would set a saint on fyre.

And for to give Giunee her due,
Thers no ill part about her;
The turtle-dove's not half so true;
Then whoe can live without her?

King Solomon, where ere he lay,
Did nere unbrace a kinder;
O! why should Ginnee gang away,
And I be left behind her?

Then will I search each place and roome
From London to Virginny,
From Dover-peere to Scanderoone,
But I will finde my Ginny.

But Ginny's turned back I feare,
When that I did not mind her;
Then back to England will I steare,
To see where I can find her.

And haveing Ginnee once againe,
If sheed doe her indeavour,
The world shall never make us twaine—
Weel live and dye together.

SONG BY KING CHARLES II

On the Duchess of Portsmouth leaving England

(For the Mirror.)

Bright was the morning, cool the air,
Serene was all the skies;
When on the waves I left my dear,
The center of my joys;
Heav'n and nature smiling were.
And nothing sad but I.

Each rosy field their odours spread,
All fragrant was the shore;
Each river God rose from his bed,
And sighing own'd her pow'r;
Curling the waves they deck'd their heads,