Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

The Customhouse scarce gets a glance,
The sounds of Bowbell die.
With charger's speed, or arrow's flight,
We steam along. – Good-night, good-night!

The Tower seems whirling in a waltz,
As on we rush and roar.
Where impious man makes Cheltenham salts,
We shave the sullen shore;
Putting the wherries all in fright,
Swamping a few. – Good-night, good-night!

We brave the perils of the Pool;
Pass colliers chain'd in rows;
See coalheavers, as black and cool
As negroes without clothes,
Each bouncing, like an opera sprite,
Stript to the skin. – Good-night, good-night!

And now I glance along the deck
Our own live-stock to view —
Some matrons, much in fear of wreck;
Some lovers, two by two;
Some sharpers, come the clowns to bite;
Some plump John Bulls. – Good-night, good-night!

A shoal of spinsters, book'd for France,
(All talking of Cheapside;)
An old she-scribbler of romance,
All authorship and pride;
A diner-out, (timeworn and trite,)
A gobe-mouche group. – Good-night, good-night!

A strolling actor and his wife,
Both going to "make hay;"
An Alderman, at fork and knife,
The wonder of his day!
Three Earls, without an appetite,
Gazing, in spleen. – Good-night, good-night!

Ye dear, delicious memories!
That to our midriffs cling
As children to their Christmas pies,
(So, all the New-School sing;
In collars loose, and waistcoats white,)
All, all farewell! – Good-night, good-night!

The charming author of that most charming of all brochures, Le Voyage autour de ma Chambre, says, that the less a man has to write about, the better he writes. But this charming author was a Frenchman; he was born in the land where three dinners can be made of one potato, and where moonshine is a substantial part of every thing. He performed his voyage, standing on a waxed floor, and making a circuit of his shelves; the titles of his books had been his facts, and the titillations of his snuff the food of his fancy. But John Bull is of another style of thinking. His appetite requires solid realities, and I give him docks, wharfs, steam-engines, and manufactures, for his powerful mastication. – But, what scents are these, rising with such potentiality upon the morning breeze? What sounds, "by distance made more sweet?" What a multitude of black, brown, bustling beings are crushing up that narrow avenue, from these open boats, like a new invasion of the pirate squadrons from the north of old. Oh, Billingsgate! – I scent thee —

– "As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, far at sea the north winds blow
Sabæan odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest. With such delay
Well-pleased, they slack their course, and many a league,
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."

The effect was not equally rapturous in the Thames; but on we flew, passing groups of buildings which would have overtopped all the castles on the Rhine, had they but been on fair ground; depots of wealth, which would have purchased half the provinces beyond the girdle of the Black Forest; and huge steamers, which would have towed a captive Armada to the Tower.

The Tower! what memories are called up by the name! How frowning are those black battlements, how strong those rugged walls, how massive those iron-spiked gates! Every stone is historical, and every era of its existence has been marked by the mightiest changes of men, monarchs, and times; then I see the fortress, the palace and the prison of kings!

But, let me people those resounding arches, dim passages, and solemn subterraneans, with the past. Here, two thousand years ago, Julius Cæsar kept his military court, with Quæstors, Prefects, and Tribunes, for his secretaries of state; Centurions for his chamberlains; and Augurs for his bishops. On this bank of the stately river, on which no hovel had encroached, but which covered with its unpolluted stream half the landscape, and rolled in quiet majesty to meet the ocean; often stood the man, who was destined to teach the Republican rabble of Rome that they had a master. I leave antiquarians to settle the spot trodden by his iron sandal. I disdain the minute meddling of the men of fibulæ and frustums of pitchers. But I can see – "in my mind's eye, Horatio" – the stately Roman casting many an eager glance eastward, and asking himself, with an involuntary grasp of his hilt, and an unconscious curl of his lip, how long he was to suffer the haranguers of the populace, the pilferers of the public, the hirelings of Cinna and Sylla, and of every man who would hire them, the whole miry mass of reformers, leaguers, and cheap-bread men, to clap their wings like a flight of crows over the bleeding majesty of Rome.

Then the chance sound of a trumpet, or the tread of a cohort along the distant rampart, would make him turn back his glance, and think of the twenty thousand first-rate soldiers whom a wave of his finger would move across the Channel, send through Gaul, sacking Lutetia, darting through the defiles of the Alps, and bringing him in triumph through the Janiculum, up to the temple of the Capitoline Jove. Glorious dreams, and gloriously realised! How vexatious is it that we cannot see the past, that we cannot fly back from the bustle of this blacksmith world, from the jargon of public life, and the tameness of private toil; into those majestic ages, when the world was as magnificent as a theatre; when nations were swallowed up in the shifting of a scene; when all were fifth acts, and when every catastrophe broke down an empire!

But, what sounds are these? The steamer had shot along during my reverie, and was now passing a long line of low-built strong vessels, moored in the centre of the river. I looked round, and here was more than a dream of the past; here was the past itself – here was man in his primitive state, as he had issued from the forest, before a profane axe had cropped its brushwood. Here I saw perhaps five hundred of my fellow-beings, no more indebted to the frippery of civilisation than the court of Caractacus. – Bold figures, daring brows, Herculean shapes, naked to the waist, and with skins of the deepest bronze. Cast in metal, and fixed in a gallery, they would have made an incomparable rank and file of gladiatorial statues.

The captain of the steamer explained the phenomenon. They were individuals, who, for want of a clear perception of the line to be drawn between meum and tuum, had been sent on this half-marine half-terrestrial service, to reinforce their morals. They were now serving their country, by digging sand and deepening the channel of the river. The scene of their patriotism was called the "hulks," and the patriots themselves were technically designated felons.

Before I could give another glance, we had shot along; and, to my surprise, I heard a chorus of their voices in the distance. I again applied to my Cicerone, who told me that all other efforts having failed to rectify their moral faculties; a missionary singing-master had been sent down among them, and was reported to be making great progress in their conversion.

I listened to the sounds, as they followed on the breeze. I am not romantic; but I shall say no more. The novelty of this style of reformation struck me. I regarded it as one of the evidences of national advance. – My thoughts instinctively flowed into poetry.

Song For The Million

"Mirth, admit me of thy crew."

Song, admit me of thy crew!
Minstrels, without shirt or shoe,
Geniuses with naked throats,
Bare of pence, yet full of notes.
Bards, before they've learn'd to write,
Issuing their notes at sight;
Notes, to tens of thousands mounting,
Careless of the Bank's discounting.
Leaving all the world behind,
England, in thy march of Mind.

Now, the carter drives his cart,
Whistling, as he goes, Mozart.
Now, a shilling to a guinea,
Dolly cook, sol-fas Rossini.
While the high-soul'd housemaid, Betty,
Twirls her mop to Donizetti.
Or, the scullion scrubs her oven
To thy Runic hymns, Beethoven.
All the sevants' hall combined,
England, in thy march of Mind.

Now, may maidens of all ages