the habits of his living existence. Brougham and Sugden will be mummyfied in the guise of the lion laying a paw on the mouse; Buccleuch as a mammoth moth; Long Wellesley as a flying fish. Peel will be represented in the act of a deprecating bow; Newcastle characterized as holding in his hand a loaf made of stone; and his Royal Highness of Kew, as being asked for a fish and rendering a serpent. Names on the pedestals, or labels on the glass cases must be rendered superfluous. Contemporary mummies should be formed into tableaux; and the Bar of every separate Court, in every succeeding age, perpetuated as in process of a suit; Kings and their Courts mummyfied in characteristic groups; and the literary and political worlds in discordant congregation. For our own parts, we look forward with cheerful confidence to a poetical corner in the Cheopsian edifice, in the midst of a little group of oddlooking fishes, reverenced by after ages as the defunct contributors toTAIT'S MAGAZINE.

THE VISION OF SIR ROBERT.

"Unus Pello Juveni non sufficit orbis.
Estuat infelix angusto limite mundi."

JUVENAL.

GONE is the night. . But still her sable pall
Hangs heavy o'er the precincts of Whitehall.
Nor moon nor stars diffuse one genial ray,
Nor eastern streaks anticipate the day.

Pale glow-worm lamps shine dim athwart the gloom
Like boding witchlights by some murderer's tomb.
Gone the last devious reveller from the street-
Gone the last prowling damsel from her beat.
O'er watchman's eyes forbidden slumbers steal.
All London sleeps-save Perceval and Peel..

Now Somnus opens wide his ivory door,
While through its arch vindictive goblins pour.
How, in wild joy, their elfin spite they wreak-
Pinch briefless Praed, and twist great Glo'ster's beak-
How, to and fro, their tiny forceps draw

The papered ringlets on the brows of Law

How, on Vane's ear, all Plunket's thunders swell

Some other strain-some happier hour may tell.

Duke Smithson swelters, and Duke Slaughter moans.
Old Bags, enswathed in threadbare flannel, groans—
Dear, martyred Gatton in his dreams he sees ;
Weeps his lost woolsack, and his ravished fees,
And that bright season, when his mystic wand
Spread Egypt's bonds and locusts o'er the land.
But to our purposed end. That end must be,
Lord of Mule-jenny-twist, to speak of thee.

Slow passed the hours. Our sleepless hero tossed
O'er blighted joys, and hopes of office lost-

Despairing hummed a tune-essayed to speak-
Shook his warm pillow-turned his feverish cheek-
Prayed, hot and weary, on his silken bed,
To every poppy power of drowsihead.

Fair is the chamber. Gems of every dye-
Etruscan jars-perfumes of Araby—
Athenian marbles, set with studious care
In mock disorder-are collected there.
There, Guido's angel and Teniers's boor,
Contrast with mellow Rembrandt's chiar obscur-
In lordly Lawrence there, commingled shine
All Titian's tint, all Michael's master-line.

In studied litter, quaintly strewed around,
Plays, bibles, missals, magazines, are found-
The bauble-sword, which oft had levees graced―
Elastic girdles for the tortured waist-

Coats, where sartorial Stultze had laboured long,
To mould the shapeless trunk en beau garçon.

Behold that toilet. O'er its broad expanse
Breathe Indian atars, and esprits from France;
Convenient scents, by pitying sages sold,
To give new fragrance, and suppress the old ;
Paste for the hands-pomatums for the hair-
Cosmetic wash, to make the forehead fair.
'Midst golden trinkets lurk the combs of lead—
Vain, vain, their task to tinge the fiery red!
Far banished thence, ignoble Stafford's ware;
For all is gold, or gilded silver, there.

Hence vulgar calico! Thou tradesman's son, Say dost thou scorn the stuff thy father spun? Gold-looped, gold-fringed, thy velvet curtain falls. Presumptuous Gobelins veils thy princely walls. For thee rich lamps their tempered light diffuse On floors that glow with Persia's hundred hues!

Embossed on gewgaws, and engraved on seals, Blaze out the bought achievements of the Peels: Three arrowy sheaves, with lackered fillets bound— One volant wasp; upon an azure ground,

A gilded lion ramped, with gaping jaws,
And bore a billy-roller in his paws;
Supporting swans, their kind assistance lent,
Australian swans, which cousin Tom had sent.
And curious eyes an empty space could spy,
Where graver's art the coronet might supply,
Should e'er some pompous patent grace the list
Of England's Peers with-Lord Mule..jenny-twist.
Slow passed the hours. Our sleepless hero tossed
O'er blighted joys, and hopes of office lost,
Till Morpheus, nodding from his throne of lead,
Sent sleep and visions to the aching head.

Behold the Church, with all her idle state,
Falls tottering piecemeal by her own dead weight.
Loud hoots the owl from Lincoln's crumbling towers.
The daw has built in roofless Lambeth's bowers.

The ox is fattening in Cathedral stalls,

And Pidcock's beasts are quartered in St. Pauls.
Room for the truck, by Herr Van Mildert drawn!
Fallen Marsh sings ballads in his rags of lawn;
Sad Howley begs for alms in piteous strain ;
And Philpotts sweeps the crossing of Park Lane.
"We cannot starve !"-the tattered churchmen cry-
But cry in vain...... The vision passes by.

And now our statesmen's dreams retrace the time
When once he prosed, sententious and sublime,
Of those just laws, great bulwarks of the crown,
Well framed to keep the Popish monster down.
Undo one rivet, or relax one chain-

Guy Faux returns-King James revives again......
The wind has changed! And he has changed his note,
And gets another canting song by rote.

The mitred Saints eschew their champion now.
Reproachful storms sit black on Eldon's brow.
On Oxford's sons with suppliant knee he waits-
Good peevish Grandam scolds him from her gates—
O, stop your vials of wrath-repress your spite-
Meek men of God!—and spare your recreant Knight!
Another scene! Enshrined in dark blue flame,
Cast forth from Hell, a nightmare spectre came-
The motley jester's morrice-bells, combined
With the long ermined train that trailed behind,
Wrapped its foul limbs-half filthy and half fine-
Half racked with pain-half frolicksome with wine-
Bedecked with trinkets, and with toys oppressed—
A hundred orders dizened on its breast......
It tried to speak. But envious palsy flung
Her spells upon its fixed and quivering tongue.
O hideous, hideous! at our Knight it leered-
Bowed low in mockery; and in hatred sneered.
That sneer-that smile-in better days had been
Cause to his soul of sorrowing and chagrin;
For that foul thing, by other ghosts disowned,
In England's kingly halls had sat enthroned-
And when our clumsy, crawling courtier lay
Low at its footstool-spurned the wretch away.
Its task is done. A hot Sirocco blew

A brimstone blast-and it has vanished too.
Next comes a vision of the mighty dead,
In whose just paths our statesman hoped to tread.
Congenial Harley leagues in close divan

With Masham's dame, to gull the drivelling Anne.
Insidious Bute all Machiavel makes plain,

To prove how kings by heavenly mandates reign-
That goodly seed in fertile places fell-
Alas! the pupil played his part too well...
Low wails the wind. A cloudy twilight falls
With horrid gloom on yonder fortress walls.

What means that scaffold-the surrounding crowd
Of armed men-the coffin and the shroud?

Say, why to heaven those vengeful murmurs rise?
Down falls the axe-and perjured Strafford dies!...
On Moloch's altar, all distained with guilt—
His two-edged sword ensanguined to the hilt--"
Great Jefferies sits. He rears his murderous crest-
He tears the wailing infant from the breast-
Nor manhood's prime, that Tory falchion spares-
Nor virgin's tears, nor matron's hoary hairs...
From the sick earth, the blood of thousands cries
Aloud for judgment-and the demon flies-
In weeds obscene, he flies from public view-
In vain-for clubs and missiles still pursue.
Ye Tories-mourn the sanguinary deed ;
And canonize the Martyr of your creed !

Thus dreams on dreams in quick succession rise-
The sleeper wakes, and, trembling, opes his eyes...
God speed thee, Peel! Another theme may tell
Thy next night's visions-for we love them well.
God speed thee, Peel! Another theme may say
How well we love thy doings in the day.

'Tis time to close our laudatory song.

"Farewell a while! We will not leave thee long."

THE DEATH-BEDS OF KINGS.

THE singular multiplication of revolutions which has occurred within the last two years throughout the kingdoms and dukedoms of Europe, as if reflecting, on a thousand shattered fragments of the vast mirror of politics, the great event of the Three Days, has engendered a new order of beings in the civilized world. Instead of knights-errant, as depicted by Ariosto or Cervantes, we have now sovereigns-errant, as at present undepicted; and it is to be inferred, that prince-errantry, or kingerrantry, will shortly assume a specific meaning among our philological definitions. Now, could there possibly exist such a personage as a dethroned or abdicated sovereign, capable of both learning and forgetting -of acquiring wisdom (like other fools, his fellow creatures) from experience, and renouncing all reminiscence of former greatness, we should conceive him to be the most edifying and enlightened companion in the world. In his regal capacity, he must have beheld the surface of society bright with that unnatural gloss, necessitated by

"The ceremony that to great ones 'longs ;"

while, in his human, he must have seen the mask stripped off; must have tasted those "apples of the Dead Sea's shore, all ashes to the taste," that shone so brightly on their stalks in the day of his exaltation; and have torn away the sheep's clothing from innumerable rapacious breasts, convicting them that" inwardly they were ravening wolves."

Unfortunately, historical experience leaves us no trace of such a man. The same weakness or wilfulness which hurled the monarch from his throne, or urged him, in a fit of waywardness, to fling away his crown and sceptre, (exchanging them, probably, for other baubles, the cowl

and rosary,)" seals up his eyes as close as oak" against all lessons of worldly or divine wisdom, and his ears against the voice of the charmer. Charles V., digging in his garden at the monastery of St. Justus, or Christina astonishing the gardes de chasse of Versailles by the excellence of her sportswomanship, were but the same crack-brained egotists who gave audience to foreign envoys on the thrones of Spain or Sweden; and, among the various potentates made and marred during the last thirty years, we have never heard of, nor seen one, who seemed inclined to profit by the harsh schooling of adversity. It is the impulse of most human beings, on reviewing their mortal career, to exclaim, like Joanna Baillie's hero

""Tiз done-'tis numbered with the things o'erpast;

Would would it were to come!

that I might prove myself a wiser and a better man." But never yet was a king, living in dethronement and exile, who did not burn to be again upon the judgment seat, that he might uphold his former measures by fiercer tyranny and better organized despotism-that he might, in short, draw yet closer the iron chain of human bondage. Nay, "though one rose from the dead," we are persuaded that they would scorn to amend their ignorance.

In point of fact, an apparition from the grave is constantly before them. History is a mighty conjuror of phantoms; or rather a dauntless resurrectionist, ever busy with pick-axe and shovel, revealing the secrets of the prison-house, and betraying the mysteries of the worm and the shroud. Yet, in spite of every loathsome lesson, they persist in believing themselves immortal, and fancying that the monstrous farce of the bended knee, the mouth honour, and passive obedience of courtiership, awaits them beyond the grave. Like the " poor Indian, whose untutored mind" conceives that his favourite dog will attend him in his hunting grounds in the sky, they expire, in the belief that the "O king, live for ever!" with which they have so long been saluted, is not a mere form of oriental courtesy ; but that, when the trumpet shall sound, human majesty will become divinely majestic, and mortal sovereignty become engirded with an immortal crown.

Let them, for a moment, contemplate the lesson afforded by the dying bed and funeral ceremonies of the three most luxurious princes of modern times.

"The king's body," says Bishop Burnet, (after adverting to the death of Charles II., and the strong suspicion of poison which arose during the process of embalming,) "the king's body was indecently neglected. Some parts of his inwards, and some pieces of the fat, were left in the water in which they were washed; all which were so carelessly looked after, that the water being poured out at a scullery hole that went to a drain, in the mouth of which a grate lay, these were seen lying on the grate many days afterwards. His funeral was very mean; no mournings were given; and the expense of it was not equal to what an ordinary nobleman's funeral gave rise to."

"The king," says St. Simon, in his Memoirs, speaking of the decease of Louis XIV., "was almost abandoned at the moment of his death. Madame de Maintenon, to whom he had made so many sacrifices, quitted him for St. Cyr four days before; and the dying monarch was repeatedly heard to inquire for her, and deplore her absence; nor was his confessor, Le Tellier, to be found when his presence was required by the king. His son, by Madame de Montespan, the Duc du Maine, was so little