Was, that, until he showed repentance,
"A solemn fast and frugal diet,
Silence exact, and pensive quiet,
Should be his lot;" and, for a blister,

He got, as gaoler, a lay sister,

Ugly as sin, bad-tempered, jealous,
And in her scruples over-zealous.
A jug of water and a carrot

Was all the prog she'd give the parrot;
But every eve when vesper-bell

"

Called sister Rosalie from her cell,
She to Vert-Vert would gain admittance,
And bring of "comfits a sweet pittance.
Comfits! alas! can sweet confections
Alter sour slavery's imperfections?
What are "preserves" to you or me,
When locked up in the Marshalsea?

The sternest virtue in the hulks,

Though crammed with richest sweetmeats, sulks.

Taught by his gaoler and adversity,

Poll saw the folly of perversity,
And by degrees his heart relented:
Duly, in fine, "the lad " repented.

His Lent passed on, and sister Bridget
Coaxed the old abbess to abridge it.

The prodigal, reclaimed and free,
Became again a prodigy,

And gave more joy, by works and words,
Than ninety-nine canary-birds,

Until his death. Which last disaster
(Nothing on earth endures !) came faster
Than they imagined. The transition
From a starved to a stuffed condition,

From penitence to jollification,
Brought on a fit of constipation.
Some think he would be living still

If given a "Vegetable Pill;"

But from a short life, and a merry,

Poll sailed one day per Charon's ferry.

By tears from nuns' sweet eyelids wept,

Happy in death this parrot slept;

For him Elysium oped its portals,

And there he talks among immortals.

But I have read, that since that happy day

(So writes Cornelius à Lapide, t

*Implicat in terminis. There must have been a beginning, else how conceive a finish (see Kant), unless the proposition of Ocellus Lucanus be adopted, viz., avapxov Kaι ατελευταίον το παν. Gresset simply has it

"Il fut un scélérat

Profès d'abord, et sans noviciat."

+ This author appears to have been a favourite with Prout, who takes every oppor tunity of recording his predilection (vide pages 5 and 114). Had the Order, however, produced only such writers as Cornelius, we fear there would have been little mention of the Jesuits in connection with literature. Gresset's opinion on the matter is contained

Proving, with commentary droll,

The transmigration of the soul),

That still Vert-Vert this earth doth haunt,

Of convent bowers a visitant;

And that, gay novices among,

He dwells, transformed into a tongue!

in an epistle to his confrère P. Boujeant, author of the ingenious treatise "Sur l'Ame des Bêtes" (see p. 295): :

VII.

The Songs of France.

ON WINE, WAR, WOMEN, WOODEN SHOES, PHILOSOPHY, FROGS AND FREE TRADE.

(Fraser's Magazine, October, 1834.)

-0

[The Fraser which introduced this first of Prout's four batches of the "Songs of France was the one containing Maclise's comical portrait of William Godwin, author of "Thoughts on Man," representing him as a very dwarf, bonneted by a disproportionately huge hat, and with his hands clasped high up behind him, apparently just between the shoulder-blades. The philosophic novelist who imagined Caleb Williams is further embellished in this grotesque limning with ponderous spectacles, a shapeless sack-coat, shortish trousers, and clumping Wellingtons-the latter so visibly as to be almost audibly walking. As further illustrative of the time at which this paper of Prout's first appeared, it may be mentioned here that next to it in that number of Regina, in the October of 1834, was an article on the "Dinner to Earl Grey" in the preceding month at Edinburgh, in going whither to assist in the taking down of the speeches at which, for the Morning Chronicle, Charles Dickens, then little more than a stripling, contributed to that journal his first morsel of descriptive reporting-a humorous fragment, not only identified as from the hand of "Boz" by the editor of the present volume, but reproduced by him in extenso and in stenographic characters in his monograph of "Charles Dickens as a Journalist." Maclise's pencillings for this seventh of the Prout Papers, when reprinted in the 1836 edition, were two in number; one of them being the vignette on the engraved title-page of the second volume, in celebration of "The Planting of the Vine in Gaul;" the other that sentimental sketch of "Meet me by Moonlight alone," in which the young draughtsman portrayed himself, as in an imaginary glimpse of Paradise, half reclining on one of the primrose paths of dalliance under green leaves at the feet of L. E. L., still in her gigot sleeves, the picture-all moonshine!]

THAT illustrious utilitarian, Dr. Bowring, the knight-errant of free trade, who is allowed to circulate just now without a keeper through the cities of France, will be in high glee at this October manifestation of Prout's wisdom. The Doctor hath found a kindred soul in the Priest. To promote the inter

K

change of national commodities, to cause a blending and a chemical fusion of their mutual produce, and establish an equilibrium between our negative and their positive electricity; such appears to be the sublime aspiration of both these learned pundits. But the beneficial results attendant on the efforts of each are widely dissimilar. Both Arcadians, they are not equally successful in the rivalry of song. We have to record nothing of Dr. Bowring in the way of acquirement to this country; we have gained nothing by his labours; our cottons, our iron, our woollens, and our coals, are still without a passport to France; while in certain home-trades, brought by his calculations into direct competition with the emancipated French, we have encountered a loss on our side to the tune of a few millions. Not so with the exertions of Prout: he has enriched England at the expense of her rival, and engrafted on our literature the choicest productions of Gallic culture. Silently and unostentatiously, on the bleak top of Watergrasshill, he has succeeded in naturalizing these foreign vegetables, associating himself in the gratitude of posterity with the planter of the potato. The inhabitants of these islands may now, thanks to Prout ! sing or whistle the "Songs of France," duty free, in their vernacular language; a vastly important acquisition! The beautiful tunes of the "Cà ira" and "Charmante Gabrielle" will become familiarized to our dull ears; instead of the vulgar "Peas upon a trencher," we shall enjoy that barrel-organ luxury of France, " Partant pour la Syrie; and for The Minstrel Boy to the wars is gone," we shall have the original, Malbroock s'en va-t-en guerre." What can be imagined more calculated to establish an harmonious understanding between the two nations, than this attempt of a benevolent clergyman to join them in a hearty chorus of common melody? a grand "duo," composed of bass and tenor, the roaring of the bull and the croaking of the frog? Far less to be patronized was the late musical festival in Westminster Abbey, which "proved nothing."

་་

To return to Dr. Bowring. We have been quietly observing (not without concern for our national pride) the ludicrous exhibition he has been making of himself in sundry places over the way. Palmerston is a good cotton-ball in the paw of the veteran grimalkin here at home; but to furnish a butt for the waggery of every provincial town in France in the person of a documentary doctor is somewhat galling to our national vanity. Commissions of inquiry are the order of the day; but some travelling "notes of interrogation" are so misshapen and grotesque, that the response or result is but a roar of laughter. This doctor, we perceive, is now the hero of every dinner of every "Chambre de Commerce; his toasts and his speeches in Norman French are, we are told, the ne plus ultra of comic performance, towards the close of each banquet. He is now in Burgundy, an industrious labourer in the vineyard of his commission; and enjoys such particular advantages, that Brougham from his woolsack is said to cast a jealous eye on his missionary's department; "invidiâ rumpantur ut ilia Codri." The whole affair exhibits that sad mixture of imbecility and ostentation too perceptible in all the doings of Utilitarianism. Of whose commissioners Phædrus has long ago given the prototype:

"

"Est ardelionum quædam Romæ natio
Trepidè concursans, occupata in otio,

Gratis anhelans, multùm agendo, nihil agens."

So no more on that topic. The publication of this paper on the "Songs of France" is intended by us, at this particular season, to counteract the prevalent epidemic which hurries away our population in crowds to Paris or Boulogne. By furnishing them here at home with Gallic fricassee, we hope to induce some, at least, to remain in the country, and forswear emigration. If our "preventive check" succeed, we shall have deserved well of our own

watering-places, which naturally look up to us for protection and patronage. Indeed, we are sorry to find the Parisian mania so visibly on the increase, in spite of the strong animadversions of Bombardinio, aided by the luminous notes of Sir Morgan. The girls will never listen to good advice

"Each pretty minx in her conscience thinks that nothing can improve her,
Unless she sees the Tuileries, and trips along the Louvre."

No! never in the memory of REGINA has Regent Street suffered such complete depopulation. It hath emptied itself into the "Boulevards." Our city friends will keep an eye on the Monument, or it may elope from Pudding Lane to the "Place Vendôme :" but as to the Thames flowing into the Seine, we cannot yet anticipate so alarming a phenomenon, although Juvenal records a similar event as having occurred in his time—

"Totus in Tyberim defluxit Orontes."

But there is still balm in Gilead, there is still corn in Egypt. The "chest" in which old Prout hath left a legacy of hoarded wisdom to the children of men is open to us, for comfort and instruction. It is rich in consolation, and fraught with goodly maxims adapted to every state and stage of sublunary vicissitude. The treatise of Boëthius, "de Consolatione Philosophiæ," worked wonders in its day, and assuaged the tribulations of the folks of the dark ages. The sibylline books were consulted in all cases of emergency. Prout's strong box rather resembleth the oracular portfolio of the Sibyl, inasmuch as it chiefly containeth matters written in verse; and even in prose it appeareth poetical. Versified apophthegms are always better attended to than mere prosaic crumbs of comfort; and we trust that the "Songs of France," which we are about to publish for the patriotic purpose above mentioned, may have the desired effect.

"Carmina vel cœlo possunt deducere lunam;
Carmine Dî superi placantur, carmine manes:

Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim !"

When Saul went mad, the songs of the poet David were the only effectual sedatives; and in one of that admirable series of homilies on Job, St. Chrysostom, to fix the attention of his auditory, breaks out in fine style: Φερε ουν, αγαπητε, της Δαβιδκης κιθαρας ανακρουσωμεν το ψαλμικον μέλος, και την ανθρωπινην γοοντες ταλαιπωρίαν ειπωμεν, και τ. λ. (Serm. III. in Job.) These French Canticles are, in Prout's manuscript, given with accompaniment of introductory and explanatory observations, in which they swim like water-fowl on the bosom of a placid and pellucid lake; and to each song there is underwritten an English translation, like the liquid reflection of the floating bird in the water beneath, so as to recall the beautiful image of the swan, which, according to the father of "lake poetry," "Floats double-swan and shadow."

Vale et fruere!

REGENT STREET, 1st Oct. 1834.

OLIVER YORKE.

WATERGRASSHILL, Oct. 1833.

I HAVE lived among the French in the freshest dawn of early youth, in the meridian hour of manhood's maturity, my lot was cast and my lines fell on the pleasant places of that once-happy land. Full gladly have I strayed among her gay hamlets and her hospitable châteaux, anon breaking the brown loaf of the peasant, and anon seated at the board of her noblemen and her