some verses.' Dr. Vincent seconded this request, and added, 'I will give a subject. You shall suppose that the Devil is come among us to see what we are doing, and you shall tell us what observations he makes.' Porson obeyed the injunctions, and this humorous effusion was the result. The Devil's Walk has also been claimed for Southey and Coleridge, but there can be no doubt that it originated with Porson, and in all probability it was afterwards amplified by them.

FROM his brimstone bed, at break of day,

A-walking the Devil is gone,

To visit his snug little farm of the earth,
And see how his stock goes on.
And over the hill, and over the dale,

He walk'd, and over the plain;

And backwards and forwards he switch'd his long tail, As a gentleman switches his cane.

And pray, how was the Devil drest?

Oh! he was in his Sunday's best;

His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,

With a little hole behind where his tail came through.

He saw a lawyer killing a viper,

On a dunghill, beside his own stable;

And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind

Of Cain and his brother Abel.

An apothecary, on a white horse,

Rode by on his avocations

"Oh!' says the Devil, 'there's my old friend
Death in the Revelations !'

He saw a cottage, with a double coach-house
A cottage of gentility !

And the Devil was pleased, for his darling vice
Is the pride that apes humility.

He stepp'd into a rich bookseller's shop;
Says he, 'We are both of one college ;
For I, myself, sat, like a cormorant, once,
Hard by on the Tree of Knowledge.'
As he pass'd through Cold-Bath-Fields, he saw
A solitary cell:

And the Devil was charm'd, for it gave him a hint
For improving the prisons of hell.

He saw a turnkey in a trice

Fetter a troublesome jade!

'Ah! nimble,' quoth he, 'do the fingers move
When they're used to their trade.'

He saw the same turnkey unfetter the same,
But with little expedition;

And the Devil thought on the long debates

On the Slave Trade Abolition.

Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide,

A pig, with vast celerity!

And the Devil grinn'd, for he saw all the while
How it cut its own throat, and he thought, with a smile,
Of 'England's commercial prosperity!'

He saw a certain minister

(A minister to his mind) Go up into a certain house, With a majority behind.

The Devil quoted Genesis,

Like a very learned clerk,

How 'Noah, and his creeping things,
Went up into the ark!'

General Gascoigne's burning face

He saw with consternation,

And back to Hell his way did take;
For the Devil thought, by a slight mistake,
'Twas the General Conflagration !

THE FATE OF SERGEANT THIN.

This tragic poem, from the pen of Henry Glassford Bell, Esq, appeared in the Edinburgh Literary Journal, in 1831, that periodical being at that time under the editorial control of the author.

WEEP for the fate of Sergeant Thin,

A man of a desperate courage was he,
More he rejoiced in the battle's din,
Than in all the mess-room revelry ;
But he died at last of no ugly gash,-
He choked on a hair of his own moustache !

Sergeant Thin was stern and tall,

And he carried his head with a wonderful air; He look'd like a man who could never fall,

For devil or don he did not care,

But death soon settled the Sergeant's hash,
He choked on a hair of his own moustache !

He did not die as a soldier should,

Smiting a foe with sword in hand

He died when he was not the least in the mood,
When his temper was more than usually bland;
He just had fasten'd his sabre-tasche,

When he choked on a hair of his own moustache !

Sorely surprised was he to find

That his life thus hung on a single hair ; Had he been drinking until he grew blind,

It would have been something more easy to bear;

Or had he been eating a cartload of trash,

But he choked on a hair of his own moustache !

The news flew quickly along the ranks,

And the whisker'd and bearded grew pale with fright;

It seem'd the oddest of all death's pranks,

To murder a Sergeant by means so slight,—

And vain were a General's state and cash,
If he choked on a hair of his own moustache !

They buried

poor

Thin when the sun went down, His cap and his sword on the coffin lay;

But many a one from the neighbouring town

Came smilingly up to the sad array,

For they said with a laughter they could not quash,
That he choked on a hair of his own moustache !

Now every gallant and gay hussar,

Take warning by this most mournful tale,It is not only bullet or scar

That may your elegant form assail;

Be not too bold-be not too rash

You may choke on a hair of your own moustache !

THE NEWCASTLE APOTHECARY.

GEORGE COLMAN 'THE YOUNGER.'

George Colman 'the younger,' Dramatist, Manager, and Examiner of Plays, so called to distinguish him from his father, who was also a dramatist, was born October 21, 1762. As the author of The Poor Gentleman, The Iron Chest, The Heir-at-Law, and numerous other standard plays, he gained for himself a high reputation as a dramatist; and his Broad Grins, and other volumes of poetry have made his name famous as a writer of humorous verse. He died October 26, 1836.

A MAN, in many a country town, we know,
Professes openly with death to wrestle;
Ent'ring the field against the grimly foe,
Arm'd with a mortar and a pestle.

Yet, some affirm, no enemies they are;
But meet just like prize-fighters, in a fair,
Who first shake hands before they box,
Then give each other plaguy knocks,