You said Master Twigg stole the plumbs, You make Master Taylor your butt, Little Biddle you likewise distress, Then you had a pitcht fight with young Rous, You discredit to Cicero-House! You have made too a plot in the night, I'll teach you to draw, you young dog! You have run up a bill at a shop, Then at dinner you're quite cock-a-hoop, T'other day when I fell o'er the form, Why, you rascal! you insolent brat! All my talking you don't shed a tear at, There-take that, Sir! and that! that! and that! There!" Palmam qui meruit ferat!" Is a Blackamoor turned outside in. His skin is fair, but his lining is utter dark; his eyes are like shotten stars, -mere jellies; or like mock-painted windows since the tax upon daylight: what his mind's eye can be, is yet a mystery with the learned, or if he hath a mental capacity at all-for, "out of sight is out of mind." noon. Wherever he stands, he is antipodean, with his midnight to your The brightest sunshine serves only to make him the gloomier object; like a dark house at a general illumination. When he stirs, it is like a Venetian blind, being pulled up and down by a string; he is a human kettle tied to a dog's tail, and with much of the same tin twang in his tone. With botanists he is a species of solanum, or night-shade, whereof the berries are in his eyes;-amongst painters he is only contemned, for his ignorance of clare-obscure; but by musicians marvelled at for playing, ante-sight, on an invisible fiddle. He stands against a wall with his two blank orbs, like a figure in high relief, howbeit but seldom relieved; and though he is fond of getting pence, yet he is confessedly blind to his own interest. In his religion he is a materialist, putting no faith but in things palpable. In politics, no visionary; in his learning a smatterer, his knowledge of all being superficial; in his age a child, being yet in leading-strings; in his life immortal, for death may lengthen his night, but can put no end to his days; in his courage heroic, for he winks at no danger; in his pretensions humble, confessing that he is nothing, even in his own eyes; in his malady hopeless, for eyes of looking-glass would not help him to see. To conclude-he is pitied by the rich, relieved by the poor, oppressed by the beadle, and horse-whipped by the fox-hunter, for not giving the view holla! "Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified !"-- MERCUTIO. It was my good fortune once, at Charing Cross's, to witness the feeding of the Boa Constrictor; rather a rare occurrence, and difficult of observation, the reptile not being remarkable for the regularity of its dinner-hour; and a very considerable interval intervenes, as the world knows, between Gorge the First, and Gorge the Second; Gorge the Third, and Gorge the Fourth. I was not in time to see the serpent's first dart at the prey; she had already twisted herself round her victim, a living White Rabbit-who with a large dark eye gazed piteously through one of the folds, and looked most eloquently that line in Hamlet "O could I shuffle off this mortal coil!" The Snake evidently only embraced him in a kill-him-when-I-wanthim manner, just firmly enough to prevent an escape-but her lips were glued on his, in a close "Judas' kiss." So long a time elapsed, in this position, both as marble-still as poor old Laocoon with his Leaches on, that I really began to doubt the tale of the Boa's ability in swallowing; and to associate the hoax before me, with that of the Bottle Conjuror. The head of the snake, in fact, might have gone without difficulty into a wine-glass, and the throat, down which the rabbit was to proceed whole, seemed not at all thicker than my thumb. In short, I thought the reported cram was nothing but stuff, and the only other visitor declared himself of my opinion: "If that 'ere little wiper swallows up the rabbit, I'll bolt um both!" and he seemed capable of the feat. He looked like a personification of what Political |