XIII.

Lunches and snacks so aldermanic

That one would furnish forth ten dinners, Where reigns a Cretan-tonguèd panic, Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic Should make some losers, and some winners;

XIV.

At conversazioni-balls

Conventicles and drawing-rooms-
Courts of law-committees-calls
Of a morning-clubs-book-stalls-
Churches-masquerades-and tombs.

XV.

And this is Hell-and in this smother
All are damnable and damned;
Each one damning, damns the other;
They are damned by one another,
By none other are they damned.

'Tis a lie to say,

66

XVI.

God damns!"1

Where was Heaven's Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of shams,

They are mines of poisonous mineral.

XVII.

Statesmen damn themselves to be

Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls To the auction of a fee;

Churchmen damn themselves to see

God's sweet love in burning coals.

1 This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the most enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active Attorney General than that here alluded to.

XVIII.

The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
To taunt, and starve, and trample on
The weak and wretched; and the poor
Damn their broken hearts to endure

Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.

XIX.

Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,-not means for being bless'd,—
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From which the worms that it doth feed
Squeeze less than they before possessed.

XX.

And some few, like we know who,
Damned-but God alone knows why-
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;
In which faith they live and die.

XXI.

Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or no

Must indifferently sicken;

As when day begins to thicken,

None knows a pigeon from a crow,

XXII.

So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers;
Lovers, haters, worst and best;

XXIII.

All are damned-they breathe an air,
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:

Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like moles, through mind, and there
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In throned state is ever dwelling.

PART THE FOURTH.

SIN.

I.

Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor-square,
A footman in the Devil's service!
And the misjudging world would swear
That every man in service there

To virtue would prefer vice.

II.

But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before damnation.

Men oftentimes

prepare a lot

Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.

III.

All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And, when they came within the belt
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.

IV.

And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
Considerably uninviting

To those who, meditation slighting,

Were moulded in a different frame.

V.

And he scorned them, and they scorned him ;
And he scorned all they did; and they

Did all that men of their own trim
Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.

VI.

Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us
To bully one another's guilt.

VII.

He had a mind which was somehow

At once circumference and centre Of all he might or feel or know; Nothing went ever out, although Something did ever enter.

VIII.

He had as much imagination
As a pint-pot;-he never could

Fancy another situation,

From which to dart his contemplation,
Than that wherein he stood.

IX.

Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
In a new manner, and refined
Those new creations, and combined
Them, by a master-spirit's law.

X.

Thus though unimaginative-
An apprehension clear, intense,

Of his mind's work, had made alive
The things it wrought on; I believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.

XI.

But from the first 'twas Peter's drift
To be a kind of moral eunuch,
He touched the hem of Nature's shift,
Felt faint and never dared uplift
The closest, all-concealing tunic.

XII.

She laughed the while, with an arch smile,
And kissed him with a sister's kiss,
And said " My best Diogenes,

I love you well-but, if you please,
Tempt not again my deepest bliss.

XIII.

""Tis you are cold-for I not coy, Yield love for love, frank, warm and true; And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy

His errors prove it-knew my joy

More, learned friend, than you.

XIV.

"Bocca bacciata non perde ventura Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna :—

So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might

cure a

Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a

Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna."

XV.

Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe,

And smoothed his spacious forehead down