A poisoner, named William Palmer,
He so many deeds have done,
Many a wife weeps for her husband,
Many a mother for her son.

Great deeds by poison he contracted;
But whether they were great or small,
He poisoned all his helpless victims,

O God, thy vengeance on him fall!
First his wife and then his brother,

They died almost in health and bloom;
The next fell on Mrs. Palmer's mother,
Antimony was their doom.

If Lord George Bentinck he have murdered,
Which in course of time we all shall see,
God's justice it will overtake him,

Thou canst not from his vengeance flee.

Chorus.

So all good people, pray take warning,
Of false friendship pray take care,
Remember the crimes of William Palmer,

Known as the Rugeley poisoner."

Our next extract shall be from "The Esher Tragedy," a ballad published at Preston:

"You feeling Christians, give attention,
Young and old of each degree,

A tale of sorrow I will mention,-
Join and sympathise with me:
It's of a sad and dreadful murder
I shall quickly let you hear,
Which was committed by a mother
On her six young children dear."

After the usual detailed description of the crime, interspersed with moral reflections, the ballad ends:

"Within the prison's massive walls

What anguish will torment her breast,
When phantoms of her six dear children
Will disturb her of her rest!

Such a sad and dreadful murder,

On record there is no worse,

Committed by a cruel mother,

Once the Prince of Wales's nurse."

"The fate of Robert Marley, for the murder of Richard Cope in Parliament Street," published by Rial, of Monmouth Court, Seven Dials, is the last we shall quote from:

"Come, all young men, by me take warning,
To my decease an ear pray lend :

Approaching is the Monday morning
When on a tree my life must end

;

For murdering my fellow-creature,
I'm to the gallows doomed to go;
For me, alas, there is no mercy,

Not while upon this earth below.
Chorus.

My sad name is Robert Marley-
What a dreadful sight to see-
For slaying of my fellow-creature,

Doomed to die on Newgate tree."

Then comes the usual history. We quote a portion, which will remind readers of Hood's celebrated lines on Thurtell's murder:

Marley says:

"His neck they cut from ear to ear,
His skull they battered in;

His name was Mr. William Wear,
He lived in Lion's Inn."

"On the 20th day of last October,
About the hour of nine o'clock,
To Parliament Street I wandered over,

Where soon I caused a dreadful shock:
A tradesman's shop I soon did enter,
Where to gain some plunder I did hope;
And with a dreadful life-preserver

I slew the servant, Richard Cope.
About the head I cruel beat him,-

I saw him weltering in his gore,-
I beat him till I thought I killed him,
I saw him fall upon the floor, &c.

Three weeks in pain my victim lingered,

My heart was then more hard than steel,
And when brought in his dying presence,

I did not for his sufferings feel;
But when tried at the bar of Newgate,
Though I so hardened did appear,
When the jury found me guilty,

My conscience smote my breast with fear;
And when the judge said,Robert Marley,
For you on earth there is no hope-
The sentence is, that you be hanged,
For murdering of Richard Cope.'
The dreadful moments are approaching
When I to the scaffold must be led,
Trembling in my dismal dungeon,

In grief I droop my guilty head.
For me there's not one spark of pity,
No sympathy for my sad fate;
All my crimes I view before me:
I see my error now too late."

These three ballads come not only from different publishers, but from distant towns,-London, Birmingham, and Preston,

but they all have the same stamp. And the whole of the last dying speeches and confessions, trials and sentences, from whatever part of the country they come, run in the same form of quaint and circumstantial detail: appeals to Heaven, to young men, to young women, to Christians in general, and moral reflections. We have seldom met with one of a different character; and the ballads on "appalling accidents," which are also very common, are like them. We give one specimen of these before quitting this part of our subject. The ballad on the "appalling accident at the Victoria Theatre" is headed with a list of killed and wounded. It begins:

"On the twenty-seventh of December,

When every heart was light and gay,
And which for long we will remember,
Which did occur on Boxing-day.
At the Victoria Theatre,

Numbers there were wounded sore,
While many fell that dreadful moment
In death's cold arms to rise no more.

Chorus.

Sixteen killed, and fifty wounded—
A moment previous all was gay
At the Victoria Theatre,

Where they'd gone on Boxing-day.

We cannot tell what is before us,

Like those who left their homes so gay,

Full of mirth, and in enjoyment,

To banish grief on Boxing-day.

We know not what may be to-morrow:

Then trust in Him who reigns on high;
All our joy may turn to sorrow,

Youth as well as age may die."

In strange contrast to the monotonous morality of murderand-accident ballads stand out what, for want of a better name, we may distinguish as the Cadgers' ballads. They are not numerous, but form such a distinct class that we cannot pass them over, although, perhaps, the less said about them the better. One specimen shall suffice. When the St. Giles's rookery was pulled down, some years since, to make room for the New Oxford-Street improvements, the event seems to have happened which is commemorated in "The Cadgers' Ball." The intention of the Government as to their favourite haunt began to be known.

"As soon as it got vind, however,

Old St. Giles's vos to fall,

They all declared, so help their never,
They'd vind up with a stunnin' ball.
Tol lol, &c.

Jack Flipflap took the affair in hand, sirs,
Who understood the thing complete;
He'd often danced afore the public,

On the boards about the streets.
Old Mother Swankey she consented

To lend her lodging-house for nix:
Says she, The crib comes down to morrow,
So go it just like beans and bricks.'
Tol lol, &c."

Jack Flipflap's arrangements having been completed, the arrival of the company is described:

"Ragged Jack, wot chalks 'Starvation,'
Looked quite fat and swellish there;

While Dick, wot dumbs it round the nation,
Had all the jaw among the fair;
Limping Ned, wot brought his duchess,
At home had left his wooden pegs;
And Jim, wot cadges it on crutches,
Vos the nimblest covey on his legs.
Tol lol, &c.

The next arrival was old Joe Burn,

Wot does the fits to Nature chuff;
And Fogg, wot's blind each day in Ho'bern,
Saw'd his way there clear enough;
Mr. Sinniwating Sparrow,

In corduroys span new and nice,
Drove up in his pine-apple barrow,
Vhich he us'd to sell a win a slice.
Tol lol, &c."

The dancing is treated of in detail, and then comes the catastrophe:

"They does now set to gallopading,

And stamp'd with all their might and main,
They thump'd the floor so precious hard in,
It split the ancient crib in twain.

Some pitched into the road bent double,

Some was smash'd with bricks done brown;
So the cadgers sav'd 'the Crown' the trouble
Of sending coves to pull it down.
Tol lol, &c."

It is obvious to the meanest capacity that the men who write this kind of cadger ballad are quite of another stamp from the authors of the other street ballads. They are writing down to their readers, and not from a common level. We think their hands can also be traced in such comic ballads as "Bubbs' Evening Party." These latter are all broad satires on upstartism. For instance, the "Père Bubbs" is a "respectable Leadenhall slaughterman," who takes a house in Belgravia; and, with a view to getting into polite society, gives a great entertainment, inserting his invitations in Bell's Life, hiring nigger melodists,

two Punch's, and making other ludicrous preparations. Joey Bubbs, the son,

"Twenty medical students brought home, and some writing men,

With a giant from Norfolk, Sam Hall, and two fighting men."

Of course the entertainment comes to amazing grief, and ends in a mill between Sam Hall and the fighting men, during which

"The two Punch-and-Judys, at no great amount of pains,
Stuff'd both their theatres full of linen and counterpanes,
And vanished away, while old Bubbs the wine sent along,
Not forgetting to clear out the hall as they went along;
In fact, as he swore when he'd found they'd been doing him,
What was stolen and smashed in the house would half ruin him.
Next day from Belgravia he moved in disgust with it,

And vowed a grand party no more he'd be cussed with it."

The only noteworthy fact about this species is, that they almost invariably are attacks upon vulgar attempts to push up in the world. One would rather have expected from such a quarter attacks on those who are already at the top of the tree.

It is with some diffidence that we approach the next branch of our subject, the political street ballad. It has of late been a subject of constant and painful remark to moralists, that the absence of reverence is on the increase, and is in fact a growing vice of the times in which we live. Without pledging ourselves to this belief, we must own that the ballad-singer handles the names and doings of those who sit in high places with a familiarity scarcely equalled by Mr. Punch himself. Educated ourselves to look with a certain awful respect on the men who rule us, and desiring as we do that the prefix of " Right Honourable" should carry with it some such weight of dignity as a third tail conferred on a basha in the reign of Chrononhotonthologus, we would gladly have passed over this ground with a light foot. But, after all, statesmen are but men, even the greatest of them. Many years ago we had a young friend, an orphan boy, much given to ruminating, who was brought up by an uncle and aunt. The uncle was a person of great dignity, and bore rule in his household in an impressive manner. The aunt, in teaching our friend out of some book of rudimentary instruction, had occasion to impress upon him the fact that all human beings were worms. The discovery was somewhat startling to his youthful notions of natural history, but after pondering some minutes he seemed to have partially mastered it. "Then, aunt, I am a worm?" he said without effort. "Of course, my dear." "And you are a worm, aunt?" "Yes, my dear." "And the king, then, is a worm, aunt?" he inquired after a pause (a king then ruled these realms). "Yes, my dear, we are all worms," was the reply