CXXVIII.

Man's a strange animal, and makes strange use

Of his own nature, and the various arts, And likes particularly to produce

Some new experiment to show his parts; This is the age of oddities let loose,

1

Where different talents find their different marts; You'd best begin with truth, and when you've lost your

Labour, there's a sure market for imposture.

CXXIX.

What opposite discoveries we have seen!

(Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)

One makes new noses, one a guillotine,

One breaks your bones, one sets them in their

CXXX.

Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes; And galvanism has set some corpses grinning, But has not answer'd like the apparatus

Of the Humane Society's beginning, By which men are unsuffocated gratis:

What wondrous new machines have late been

CXXXI.

spinning!

*

CXXXII.

This is the patent-age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions;

Sir Humphrey Davy's lantern, by which coals Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions, Tombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles,

Are ways to benefit mankind, as true,
Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.

CXXXIII.

Man's a phenomenon, one knows not what,
And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;
"Tis pity though, in this sublime world, that
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure;
Few mortals know what end they would be at,

But whether glory, power, or love, or treasure, The path is through perplexing ways, and when The goal is gain'd, we die, you know-and then

What then?

CXXXIV.

I do not know, no more do you

-

And so good night. Return we to our story: "Twas in November, when fine days are few, And the far mountains wax a little hoary, And clap a white cape on their mantles blue; And the sea dashes round the promontory, And the loud breaker boils against the rock, And sober suns must set at five o'clock.

CXXXV.

Twas, as the watchmen say, a cloudy night;
No moon, no stars, the wind was low or loud
By gusts, and many a sparkling hearth was bright.
With the piled wood, round which the family
crowd;

There's something cheerful in that sort of light,
Even as a summer sky's without a cloud:
I'm fond of fire, and crickets, and all that,
A lobster salad, and champaigne, and chat.

Arose a clatter might awake the dead,

If they had never been awoke before, And that they have been so we all have read, And are to be so, at the least, once more The door was fasten'd, but with voice and fist First knocks were hcard, then,,Madam-Madam

hist!

CXXXVII.

,,For God's sake, Madam

Madam-here's my

master,

,,With more than half the city at his back

,,Was ever heard of such a curst disaster!

,,'Tis not my fault-I kept good watch-Alack! undo the bolt a little faster

„Do, , pray ,,They're on the stair just now, and in a crack ,,Will all be here; perhaps he yet may fly

,,Surely the window's not so very high!