Dr. Tory.- Pooh, nonsense ask Ude how he feels,

When, for Epicure feasts, he prepares his live eels,

By flinging them in, 'twixt the bars of the fire,

And letting them wriggle on there till they tire.

- "quite

He, too, says "'t is painful' makes his heart bleed ". But "your eels are a vile, oleaginous breed."

He would fain use them gently, but Cookery says "No,"

And in short-eels were born to be treated just so.3

'Tis the same with these Irish, - who're odder fish still,

Your tender Whig heart shrinks from using them ill;

I myself in my youth, ere I came to get wise,

Used at some operations to blush to the

We, Doctors, must act with the firmness

of Ude,

And, indifferent like him, -so the fish is but stewed,

Must torture live Pats for the general good.

[Here patient groans and kicks a little.

Dr. Whig.—But what, if one's patient 's so devilish perverse,

That he won't be thus tortured?

Dr. Tory. Coerce, sir, coerce. You 're a juvenile performer, but once you begin,

You can't think how fast you may train your hand in:

And (smiling) who knows but old Tory may take to the shelf,

With the comforting thought that, in place and in pelf,

He's succeeded by one just ashimself?

- bad as

Dr. Whig (looking flattered). — Why, to tell you the truth, I 've a small matter here, Which you helped me to make for my patient last year,

[Goes to a cupboard and brings out a strait-waistcoat and gag. And such rest I 've enjoyed from his raving since then

That I've made up my mind he shall wear it again.

Dr. Tory (embracing him). — Oh, charming! - My dear Doctor Whig,

you 're a treasure, Next to torturing, myself, to help you is a pleasure.

[Assisting Dr. Whig. Give me leave I've some practice in these mad machines; There-tighter — the gag in the mouth, by all means. Delightful! all 's snugneed you fear,

not a squeak

You may now put your anodynes off till

the Church poet whom Chester approves.

1 See Edinburgh Review, No. 117.

2 "Your Lordship," says Mr. Overton, in the Dedication of his Poem to the Bishop of Chester, "has kindly expressed your persuasion that my 'Muse will always be a Muse of sacred song and that it will be tuned as David's was.'" 3 Sophocles.

O Horace! when thou, in thy vision of

- now, sign

That 's sufficient read quite enough,

ing thereof "?

(Boy stares.) Oh! a mere form of words, to make things smooth and brief,

A commodious and short make-believe of belief,

Which our Church has drawn up in a form thus articular

To keep out in general all who 're particular.

But what's the boy doing? what! reading all thro',

And my luncheon fast cooling! - this never will do.

Boy (poring over the Articles).—
Here are points which-pray, Doc-

tor, what's "Grace of Congru-
ity"?

Doctor P. (sharply). — You'll find out, young sir, when you 've more ingenuity.

At present, by signing, you pledge yourself merely,

Whate'er it may be, to believe it sincerely.

Both in dining and signing we take the same plan,

First, swallow all down, then digest

LATE TITHE CASE.

"sic vos non vobis."

1833.

"The Vicar of Birmingham desires me to state that, in consequence of the passing of a recent Act of Parliament, he is compelled to adopt measures which may by some be considered harsh or precipitate; but, in duty to what he owes to his successors, he feels bound to preserve the rights of the vicarage." - Letter from Mr. S. Powell, August 6.

No, not for yourselves, ye reverend men, Do you take one pig in every ten,

But for Holy Church's future heirs,
Who 've an abstract right to that pig, as
theirs;

The law supposing that such heirs male
Are already seized of the pig, in tail.
No, not for himself hath Birmingham's
priest

His "well-beloved" of their pennies fleeced:

But it is that, before his prescient eyes, All future Vicars of Birmingham rise, With their embryo daughters, nephews, nieces,

And 't is for them the poor he fleeces. He heareth their voices, ages hence, Saying, "Take the pig?'. "oh take the pence;

دو

The cries of little Vicarial dears,
The unborn Birminghamites, reach his

Thou, too, Lundy of Lackington!
A Rector true, if e'er there was one,
Who, for sake of the Lundies of coming
ages,

Gripest the tenths of laborers' wages.1
'T is true, in the pockets of thy small-
clothes

The claimed "obvention" 2 of fourpence goes;

1 Fourteen agricultural laborers (one of whom received so little as six guineas for yearly wages, one eight, one nine, another ten guineas, and the best paid of the whole not more than 187. annually) were all, in the course of the autumn of 1832, served with demands of tithe at the rate of 4d. in the 17. sterling, on behalf of the Rev. F. Lundy, Rector of Lackington, etc.— The Times, August, 1833.

2 One of the various general terms under which oblations, tithes, etc., are comprised.

But its abstract spirit, unconfined, Spreads to all future Rector-kind, Warning them all to their rights to wake, And rather to face the block, the stake, Than give up their darling right to take.

One grain of musk, it is said, perfumes
(So subtle its spirit) a thousand rooms,
And a single four-pence, pocketed well,
Thro' a thousand rectors' lives will tell.
Then still continue, ye reverend souls,
And still as your rich Pactolus rolls,
Grasp every penny on every side,
From every wretch, to swell its tide:
Remembering still what the Law lays
down,

In that pure poetic style of its own,
"If the parson in esse submits to loss, he
"Inflicts the same on the parson in
posse."

FOOLS' PARADISE.

DREAM THE FIRST.

I HAVE been, like Puck, I have been, in a trice,

To a realm they call Fools' Paradise,
Lying N.N.E. of the Land of Sense,
And seldom blest with a glimmer thence.
But they want it not in this happy place,
Where a light of its own gilds every face;
Or if some wear a shadowy brow,
'Tis the wish to look wise, - not know-
ing how.

Self-glory glistens o'er all that 's there,
The trees, the flowers have a jaunty air;
The well-bred wind in a whisper blows,
The snow, if it snows, is couleur de rose,
The falling founts in a titter fall,
And the sun looks simpering down on all.

But that ("lapt in Elysium' as they are)

Even blessed fools must have their share. And so it happened: - but what befell, In Dream the Second I mean to tell.

THE RECTOR AND HIS CURATE; OR, ONE POUND TWO.

"I trust we shall part as we met, in peace and charity. My last payment to you paid your salary up to the 1st of this month. Since that, I owe you for one month, which, being a long month, of thirty-one days, amounts, as near as can calculate, to six pounds eight shillings. My steward returns you as a debtor to the amount of

SEVEN POUNDS TEN SHILLINGS FOR CON-ACRE

GROUND, which leaves some trifling balance in
my favor." Letter of Dismissal from the Rev.
Marcus Beresford to his Curate, the Rev. T. A.
Lyons.
THE

account is balanced
drawn out,

-the bill

The debit and credit all right, no doubt

The Rector rolling in wealth and state,
Owes to his Curate six pound eight;
The Curate, that least well-fed of men,
Owes to his Rector seven pound ten,
Which maketh the balance clearly due
From Curate to Rector, one pound

two.

Ah balance, on earth unfair, uneven! But sure to be all set right in heaven, Where bills like these will be checkt, some day,

And the balance settled the other way: Where Lyons the curate's hard-wrung

sum

Will back to his shade with interest

come;

And Marcus, the rector, deep may rue This tot, in his favor, of one pound two.

PADDY'S METAMORPHOSIS.1

1833.

ABOUT fifty years since, in the days of our daddies,

That plan was commenced which the wise now applaud,

1 I have already, on p. 656 referred to this squib, as being one of those wrung from me by the Irish Coercion Act of my friends, the Whigs.