[The following song was written in the Autumn of this year, for the 19th Polish Infantry, to which regiment my father's friend Franck belonged.]

SONG FOR THE NINETEENTH.

THE morning sky is hung with mist,
The rolling drum the street alarms,
The host is paid, his daughter kiss'd,
So now to arms, so now to arms.

Our evening bowl was strong and stiff,
And may we get such quarters oft,

I ne'er was better lodged, for if

The straw was hard, the maid was soft.

So now to arms, to arms, to arms,
And fare you well, my little dear,

And if they ask who won your charms,

Why say

'twas in your

Nineteenth Year.

[In the "Athenæum" for August, the "Comic "-which appears to have been finished unusually early this year-was announced in the ensuing letter to its publishers.]

GENTLEMEN,

You ask me for an announcement of the Comic for 1837; but between ourselves and the post-now the foreign post-I have been meditating a manifesto.

Politics are undeniably the standing orders of the time; but possibly the standing orders may now signify those classes who keep on their legs in the presence of the privileged or sitting orders;-I mean to say that politics are become, like

Boniface's ale in the Beaux Stratagem, meat and drink and everything. We eat politics in whitebait dinners, and quaff and sing them afterwards with hip, hip, hips and Hawes. We dance politics-take hands, cast off, change sides, and some anti-ministerialists call loudly for a new set.

We wear politics-e. g. white hats. We marry politics, and dissenters at the same time. We baptise with politics -or at least call names. We wash our faces with politicssoap versus newspapers-and warm ourselves at them in the shape of cheap Durham coal. We even laugh and groan politics, and cough them-in the Commons; and doubtless they will be introduced by us into sternutation, like a certain German patriot who cannot sneeze without saying "Pr-r-r-russia!"

Politics are part of our Foreign and Domestic Cookery,— we roast with them, fry, stew, broil, boil, and too often boil over, with them: we curry and devil with them—some persons cook a fine kettle of fish with them.

Turkey is larded with politics;-and they are polled in Greece.

Politics are staples of trade and manufacture; and agriculture is quite distressed by them. We export and import them; we sow them with corn; and harvest them with tithes; we spin them, hammer at them, forge them, and breed bulls with them. We live in them and die by them. We load pistols with politics; and in fact can hardly walk twelve or fifteen paces without them. Private life becomes public. Parties invite people to politics, and people invite politics to parties. We travel with politics to the continental baths; we go to sea with them to the coast of Biscay, and return to port with them in Leith harbour.

Have not politics separated our two Chambers, or as the New Poor-laws (the very laws for bull-making Ireland) have done with England, divided them into Unions? By the

way Barry-not Newtonbarry but New-House Barry-is decidedly wrong in his design. A new style is requisite for a new order of things; but I shall perhaps submit a plan for a new building-all party-walls-in my next frontispiece.

Politics point pencils and steel pens: we draw them in caricatures and paint them in party-colours, with predomi nant orange, green, or true blue. Nor are we without some Black Masters. We write politics and review with them; bards poetise and other writers prose upon them; they stand for attic salt as well as culinary pepper and vinegar. Farces are made of politics, and alas! tragedies of domestic interest, skeleton sermons are filled up with them; and neither novelists nor historians can tell tales without them. Philosophy has caught the influenza-the whole Seven Sages are rolled into one, and he is-Bias! Our very colleges teacn politics a little longer and our Free schools and unfree schools will do the same; primers will be primed with them, Syntax will be mixed up with the Malt-tax; the parts of speech will be drawn from parts of speeches; and the rule of King, Lords, and Commons will be tried by the Rule of Three.

Such is the spirit of our age, the ticks of Time's clock are poli-ticks. I should not wonder to see all the heads in the National Portrait Gallery inclining to whiggism-or without a wig amongst them-nay, it would not astonish me to see even the ladylike Book of Beauty exhibiting its fascinating figures drawn all on one side.

It becomes a serious question then-ought not the Comic to have its barrel adapted as a political organ; and should not its Editor, heretofore only a merry thought, become a sidesman!

Must I take, like the Railway Engineers, a decided line, or construct my literary passages like those blind alleys with their wall-eyes that lead to nowhere at all?

The Comic Annual itself shall answer the question ; and you will have a hint of my designs when I tell you that they will comprise cuts at such popular and unpopular subjects as follows:-" The Collision "-"The Peers and their Treatment of Bills" "Church Revenue "-"The Corn Question"-"Spain its War and its Loan "-" Registration" --"Imprisonment for Debt "-"The Papal Bull"-"Municipal Reform "-"The Jew Bill ”—“ Railroads "—" Dissenter's Unions "—"Civil War "—and "Agricultural Pressure." As to the writing I shall keep my own counsel, whether it will incline to right or left, or be bolt upright. Perchance I may breathe my sentiments like some stormy winds from all quarters at once, and this, gentlemen, is all at present from your absent,

Most obedient,

THOMAS HOOD.

. 1837.

[THE Comic" this year affords more material. Besides the Preface, are numerous articles, some more or less of a political tendency -an unusual quality in my father's writings. There are, beside two Odes, one to "Hahnemann," the other to "Green, the Aëronaut," the "Blue Boar," "Agricultural Distress," "The Desert Born," and "Love Lane."]

THE COMIC ANNUAL FOR 1837.

PREFACE.

COURTEOUS and Gentle Reader! for the eighth time greeting;-for as "the short-fingered little progeny" exclaims at her grand piano, "Thank Goodness! I have reached an Octave at last!" The Comic has lived to see a second Olympiad; and as no Competitor appears in the Arena, it may modestly assume that it is crowned with success.

And now for a few words under the rose: if, indeed, it be not too late for even the Last Rose of Summer. I am afraid, if you have read my Announcement, that the present Volume will seem not quite to square with that Circular: you will expect a little more political pepper and spice than will be found in the seasoning. The truth is, I am all abroad, not figuratively but geographically; in a remote land, where before The Times arrives, it is like "the good old times," rather out of date; and consequently I get my news, as some persons receive their game, too far gone to be of use.

This