erty, that has stood so many years in pneumatic tallness, shading the republican regions of commerce and agriculture, will stand the wreck of the Spanish Inquisition, the pirates of the hyperborean seas, and the marauders of the Aurora Bolivar! But, gentlemen of the jury, if you convict my client, his children will be doomed to pine away in a state of hopeless matrimony; and his beautiful wife will stand lone and delighted, like a dried up mullen-stalk in a sheep. pasture.

L. B. PARTINGTON.

CCXLIV. THE FARMER AND THE COUNSELOR.

1. A COUNSEL in the Common Pleas,
Who was esteemed a mighty wit,
Upon the strength of a chance hit
Amid a thousand flippancies,
And his occasional bad jokes

In bullying, bantering, browbeating,
Ridiculing, and maltreating
Women, or other timid folks,

In a late cause resolved to hoax
A clownish Yorkshire farmer-one
Who, by his uncouth look and gait,
Appeared expressly meant by fate
For being quizzed and played upon:
So having tipped the wink to those
In the back rows,

Who kept their laughter bottled down,
Until our wag should draw the cork,
He smiled jocosely on the clown,

And went to work.

2. "Well, Farmer Numskull, how go calves at York?
“Why—not, sir, as they do wi' you,

But on four legs, instead of two."
"Officer!" cried the legal elf,

Piqued at the laugh against himself,

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'Do, pray, keep silence down below there.

Now look at me, clown, and attend;

Have I not seen you somewhere, friend?"
"Yees-very like-I often go there."
"Our rustic's waggish-quite laconic,"
The counsel cried with grin sardonic;
"I wish I'd known this prodigy,

This genius of the clods, when I
On circuit was at York residing.

Now, Farmer, do for once speak true-
Mind, you 're on oath, so tell me, you,
Who doubtless think yourself so clever,
Are there as many fools as ever

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In the West Riding?"

'Why-no, sir, no; we've got our share,
But not so many as when you were there!"

HORACE SMITH

CCXLV.-A MODEST WIT.

1. A SUPERCILIOUS nabob of the east

Haughty, being great-purse-proud, being rich, A governor, or general, at the least,

I have forgotten which

Had in his family an humble youth,

Who went from England in his patron's suite,

An unassuming boy, and in truth

A lad of decent parts, and good repute.

2. This youth had sense and spirit; But yet, with all his sense,

Excessive diffidence

Obscured his merit.

3. One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine, His honor, proudly free, severely merry,

Conceived it would be vastly fine

To crack a joke upon his secretary.

4. "Young man," he said, "by what art, craft or trade,
Did your good father gain a livelihood?"-
"He was a saddler, sir," Modestus said,
"And in his time was reckoned good."

5. "A saddler, eh! and taught you Greek,
Instead of teaching you to sew!
Pray, why did not your father make
A saddler, sir, of you?"

6. Each parasite, then, as in duty bound,
The joke applauded, and the laugh went round.
At length Modestus, bowing low,

Said, (craving pardon, if too free he made,)

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Sir, by your leave I fain would know Your father's trade!"

7. My father's trade! Bless me, that 's too bad! My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad ? My father, sir, did never stoop so low

He was a gentleman, I'd have you know."

8. "Excuse the liberty I take,"

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Modestus said, with archness on his brow,
'Pray, why did not your father make
A gentleman of you?"

CCXLVI. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT.

1. On! learning's a very fine thing,

As, also, are wisdom and knowledge;
For a man is as great as a king,

If he has but the airs of a college.
And now-a-days all must admit,

In learning we 're wondrously favored,
For you scarce o'er your window can spit
But some learn-ed man is beslavered!

2. We'll all of us shortly be doomed
To part with our plain understanding;
For intellect now has assumed

An attitude truly commanding!

All ranks are so dreadfully wise,

Common sense is set quite at defiance,
And the child for its porridge that cries,
Must cry in the language of science!

3. The Weaver it surely becomes

To talk of his web's involution;
For doubtless the hero of thrums,
Is a member of some Institution.
He speaks of supply and demand.

With the air of a great legislator,
And almost can tell you off-hand,

That the smaller is less than the greater!

4. The Blacksmith, 'mid cinders and smoke,
Whose visage is one of the dimmest,
His furnace profoundly will poke,
With the air of a practical chemist;

Poor Vulcan has recently got
A lingo that 's almost historic,
And can tell you that iron is hot,
Because it is filled with caloric!

5. The Mason, in book-learnëd tone,

Describes, in the very best grammar,
The resistance that dwells in the stone,

And the power that resides in the hammer;
For the son of the trowel and hod

Looks as big as the frog in the fable,
While he talks in a jargon as odd

As his brethren, the builders of Babel!

6. The Cobbler who sits at your gate,

Now pensively points his hog's bristle,
Though the very same Cobbler of late
O'er his work used to sing and to whistle;
But cobbling 's a paltry pursuit

For a man of polite education;

His works may be trod under foot,

Yet he 's one of the lords of creation!

7. Oh! learning 's a very fine thing!
It almost is treason to doubt it-
Yet many of whom I could sing,
Perhaps, might as well be without it:
And without it my days I will pass,
For to me it was ne'er worth a dollar,
And I do n't wish to look like an ass
By trying to talk like a scholar!

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

CCXLVII.-A TEA PARTY.

1. WHEN the party commences, all starched and all glum, They talk of the weather, their corns, or sit mum:

They will tell you of ribbons, of cambric, of lace,

How cheap they were sold-and will tell you the place.

They discourse of their colds, and they hem and they cough, And complain of their servants to pass the time off.

2. But tea, that enlivener of wit and of soul, More loquacious by far than the draughts of the bowl,

Soon loosens the tongue and enlivens the mind,
And enlightens their eyes to the faults of mankind.
It brings on the tapis their neighbors' defects,
The faults of their friends, or their willful neglects;
Reminds them of many a good-natured tale

Of those who are stylish and those who are frail,
Till the sweet-tempered dames are converted by tea,
Into character-manglers-Gunaikophagi.

In harmless chit-chat an acquaintance they roast,
And serve up a friend, as they serve up a toast.
Some gentle faux pas, or some female mistake,
Is like sweetmeats delicious, or relished as cake:
A bit of broad scandal is like a dry crust,

It would stick in the throat, so they butter it first
With a little affected good nature, and cry
Nobody regrets the thing deeper than I.

3. Ah ladies, and was it by heaven designed,
That ye should be merciful, loving, and kind!
Did it form you like angels and send you below,
To prophesy peace-to bid charity flow?
And have you thus left your primeval estate,
And wandered so widely-so strangely of late?
Alas! the sad course I too plainly can see,
These evils have all come upon you through tea.

4. Cursed weed, that can make your fair spirits resign The character mild of their mission divine,

That can blot from their bosoms that tenderness true,
Which from female to female for ever is due.

Oh how nice is the texture, how fragile the frame

Of that delicate blossom, a female's fair fame.
'Tis the sensitive plant, it recoils from the breath,
And shrinks from the touch as if pregnant with death.
How often, how often, has innocence sighed,
Has beauty been reft of its honor, its pride,
Has virtue, though pure as an angel of light,
Been painted as dark as a demon of night;
All offered up victims-an auto da fè,
At the gloomy cabals, the dark orgies of tea.

5. If I, in the remnant that's left me of life,
Am to suffer the torments of slanderous strife,
Let me fall, I implore, in the slang-whanger's claw,
Where the evil is open, and subject to law;