MY NATIVE TOWN.

SAMUEL LOver.

WE have heard of Charybdis and Scylla of old;
Of Maelstrom the modern enough has been told;
Of Vesuvius's blazes all travellers bold

Have established the bright renown:

But spite of what ancients or moderns have said
Of whirlpools so deep, or volcanoes so red,

The place of all others on earth that I dread

Is my

beautiful native town.

Where they sneer if you're poor, and they snarl if you're rich; They know every cut that you make in your flitch;

If

your hose should be darn'd, they can tell every stitch;
And they know when your wife got a gown.

The old one, they say, was made new-for the brat;
And they're sure you love mice-for you can't keep a cat ;
In the hot flame of scandal how blazes the fat,

When it falls in your native town!

If a good stream of blood chance to run in your veins,
They think to remember it not worth the pains,
For losses of caste are to them all the gains,

So they treasure each base renown.

If your mother sold apples-your father his oath,
And was cropp'd of his ears-yet you'll hear of them both;
For loathing all low things they never are loath,

In your virtuous native town.

If the dangerous heights of renown you should try,
And give all the laggards below the go-by,
For fear you'd be hurt with your climbing so high,
They're the first to pull you down.

Should Fame give you wings, and you mount in despite,
They swear Fame is wrong, and that they're in the right,
And reckon you there-though you're far out of sight,
Of the owls of your native town.

Then give me the world, boys! that's open and wide,
Where honest in purpose, and honest in pride,
You are taken for just what you're worth when you're tried
And have paid your reckoning down.

Your coin's not mistrusted-the critical scale

Does not weigh ev'ry piece, like a huxter at sale;
The mint-mark is on it-although it might fail
To pass in your native town.

TWELVE ARTICLES.

DEAN SWIFT.

I. LEST it may more quarrels breed,
I will never hear you read.

II. By disputing I will never,

To convince you, once endeavour.

III. When a paradox you stick to,
I will never contradict you.

IV. When I talk and you are heedless,
I will show no anger needless.

V. When your speeches are absurd,
I will ne'er object a word.

VI. When you, furious, argue wrong,
I will grieve and hold my tongue.
VII. Not a jest or humorous story
Will I ever tell before ye:
To be chidden for explaining,
When

you quite mistake the meaning.

VIII. Never more will I suppose

You can taste my verse or prose.

IX. You no more at me shall fret,
While I teach and you forget.

X. You shall never hear me thunder
When you blunder on, and blunder.

XI. Show your poverty of spirit,

And in dress place all your merit;
Give yourself ten thousand airs;
That with me shall break no squares.

XII. Never will I give advice

Till

you please to ask me thrice:
Which if
you in scorn reject,
'Twill be just as I expect.

PATRIOTIC MILITARY SONGS

OVE of country and love of arms are common to all mankind, and have been held in honour from the earliest recorded times.

If such a melody as that which makes the Switzer weep, and impels him to his native home, be not the possession of all lands, there is some key-note which has a lively echo in the heart of every people, and vibrates to the call of country;something else as potent as the Rans des Vaches to awaken patriotism.

How charmingly De Beranger makes the bird of passage serve this purpose in his exquisite song "Les Hirondelles!"

66 Captif au rivage du Maure,

Un guerrier, courbé sous ses fers,
Disait Je vous revois encore,
Oiseaux ennemis des hivers.
Hirondelles, que l'esperance

Suit jusqu'en ces brûlants climats,
Sans doute vous quittez la France:

De mon pays ne me parlez vous pas ?"

The idea of the poet, in this first verse of his lovely elegy, was verified in fact; for M. Perrotin gives a note in his "Euvres Complètes" of Beranger, telling us that the French soldiers, made prisoners of war by the Arabs in the late Algerian campaigns, were wont to sing this song, but that, before its conclusion, tears used to choke their utterance.

Not only is love of country universal, but it is the impression of every people that their own country is the best.

"Such is the patriot's boast where'er we roam—

His first, best country, ever is at home."

Few are the stoics who boast of being citizens of the world, elevated above what they are pleased to call the prejudice of prizing one nation above another; whose comprehensive wisdom affects to estimate the whole human race with equal consideration, or, rather, passionless indifference; few they are, and well they are so; and perhaps they are fewer than even they themselves think:--why, even that worldly, witty maxim-writer, Rochefoucauld, in the midst of all his satire, and sarcasm, and mistrust of human virtue, admits the existence of that of patriotism, and in terms of tenderness, rare with him

"L'accent du pays où l'on est né, demeure dans l'esprit et dans le cœur, comme dans la language."

The gentle and conscientious Cowper exclaims

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still-
My country!"

Which apostrophe, if I remember rightly, the proud Byron in his angry exile quoted. Again, Byron exhibits recollections of England which all his anger could not quench, thus—

"On, on, through meadows, managed like a garden,

A paradise of hops and high production;

For, after years of travel by a bard in

Countries of greater heat but lesser suction,

A green field is a sight which makes him pardon
The absence of that more sublime construction,
Which mixes up vines, olives, precipices,
Glaciers, volcanoes, oranges, and ices."

And then, with characteristic versatility, and love of contrast and the grotesque, he adds—

But through this veil of fun peeps out a latent love of country.

As for the love of arms, that is evidently inherent in our nature, from the fact of children playing at soldiers. All arms are imitated; the natural state of infantry is not enough; Tommy aspires to the cavalry; his gouty grandpapa's cane, used to soberer paces, is converted into a war-horse, and he charges round the room, an imaginary guardsman; while Bobby, who affects the artillery, is boring a hole with a spike of red-hot iron into the bone of some timid sheep's trotter, to make a cannon; and possibly the military cocked-hats of both are formed out of some whity-brown, which was once the wrapper of some parcel from the shop of Obediah Smallsoul, of the Peace Society. This love pervades the sports of riper years; it has coloured the national games of the civilized and the savage:-the Pyrrhic dance of the accomplished Greek has its counterpart, even now, in the war-dance of the South-sea Islander and the American Red Indian. This love "grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength:"to be a soldier is the aspiration of most young men, a desire too often disturbing the equanimity of some long-headed father, who had intended for his young Hotspur a more profitable pursuit. And this admiration of the

"Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war,"

is shared by woman; for, if she cannot be a soldier herself, she is most ready to bestow her love on him who is one:—and this feeling must have been predominant from the earliest ages, for Pagan records bear evidence of it in the myth of Mars and Venus.

Now, these two passions of our nature, always very strong in the Irish, became, from the peculiarity of Ireland's political position, accidentally strengthened. Nearly up to the end of the last century, the great mass of the youth of Ireland were forbidden the honourable profession of arms at home, and were thus forced to leave the land they loved to enjoy the forbidden desire, which they exercised abroad; and, in his exile, the love of the Irishman for his country increased :—