Then all on a sudden two persons of worth, This description of the two sexes bathing in common in the chief water drinking place of England so recently as during the American war, would seem incredible if it were not confirmed by an almost contemporary writer, Smollett, in his last, and incomparably his best novel, "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker." Our friend Simkin prepares for a ball :— Thank heaven, of late, my dear mother, my face is For I ride in a chair with my hands in a muff, And have bought a silk coat, and embroidered the cuff; But what with my Nivernois hat can compare, My buckles and box are in exquisite taste; The one is of paper, the other of paste; And my stockings of silk are just come from the hosier, For to-night I'm to dance with the charming Miss Toser. He goes to the ball. After two or three pages of rhapsodies : But hark! now they strike the melodious string, Sir Boreas Blubber steps forth in the middle, Like a hollyhock, noble, majestic, and tall, Sir Boreas, great in the minuet known, Since the day that for dancing his talents were shown, To a tune that they played us a hundred times o'er. I must find room for some scraps of a public breakfast. larity : Simkin invokes the desire of popu "Twas you made my Lord Ragamuffin come here, And to-day with extreme complaisance and respect asked You've heard of my Lady Bunbutter, no doubt, At a snug private party her friends to divert ; But they say that of late she's grown sick of the town Her ladyship's favourite house is "The Bear," Now my lord had the honour of coming down post He said it would greatly our pleasure promote Though I never as yet could his reason explain How the misses did huddle and scuddle and run, For by waggling their gown-tails they seemed to take pains And Madam Van Twister, Her Ladyship's sister; Lord Cram and Lord Vulter, Sir Brandish O'Culter, With Marshal Carouser, And old Lady Drouser, And the great Hanoverian Baron Pansmouser, Now why should the Muse, my dear mother, relate In landing old Lady Bumfidget and daughter This obsequious lord tumbled into the water; But a nymph of the flood brought him safe to the boat A worst disaster than that which befel Lord Ragamuffin is in store for our good-humoured letterwriter. His friend, Captain Cormorant, who by the way turns out to be no captain at all, and who had undertaken, amongst other fashionable accomplishments, to initiate him in the mysteries of lansquenet, cheats him out of seven hundred pounds; so that Miss Jenny loses her lover and her cousin his money at one stroke. Prudence and Tabitha also come in for their share of misadventures; and the whole party return, crestfallen and discomfited, to the good old Lady Blunderhead and their Yorkshire Manor House. IV. AMERICAN POETS. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER-FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. I DID a great injustice the other day when I said that the Americans had at last a great poet. I should have remembered that poets, like sorrows, "Come not single spies But in battalions." There is commonly a flight of those singing-birds, as we had ourselves at the beginning of the present century; and besides Professor Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Lowell, and Poe do the highest honour to America. The person, however, whom I should have most injured myself in forgetting, for my injustice could not damage a reputation such as his, was John G. Whittier, the most intensely national of American bards. Himself a member of the Society of Friends, the two most remarkable of his productions are on subjects in which that active although peaceful sect take a lively interest: the anti-slavery cause, in the present day; and the persecution of the Quakers, which casts such deep disgrace on the memory of the |