On a Jew felo-de-se who threw himself from the top of the Monument. "Curtius the second! whatsoe'er thy view,

In leaping from the monument to ground,
Could no more manageable gulf be found-
Than England's vast metropolis, to shew
Thy courage or good will ?-Had every Jew

But one joint wind-pipe all Great Britain round,
Ev'n then 'twould hardly close th' abyss unsound,
To break it from a precipice so new.

Cheats as they were, thy brethren still remain,
Curb'd by no rigor-by no menace aw'd:
Still yawn the chasms of usury and fraud,

And thou wast prodigal of life in vain!
But to the column gav'st one record true-

An Israelite died here, who prov'd himself no Jew."

The following complimentary effusion, like a scorpion, has a sting in its tail:

-admitted to a lady's room one day

(Boudoir, or work chamber, or what you will)
Lost in surprise, my head as in a mill,

Turn'd with the wonders of its nice display

All China strove in delicate array

Each bracket, angle and recess to fill:
Tea-pot o'er tea-pot rising higher still-
Cups, basons, saucers, all of purest clay.
Nigh these, an ill-assorted figure sat;

Produce it seem'd of Egypt's tasteless clime,
Coarse workmanship, not unassail'd by time,

Of lumpish visage, on its haunches squat,
Too bad for use, too clumsy for a shelf-

Too ugly for parade-in short it was herself!"

Mr. Halhed, indeed, had a happy turn for epigram-considerably enhanced no doubt by his partiality, for Martial. We can only spare space for a short specimen or two. One is dated 15th February, 1808-on the death of the Marquis of Thomond, by a fall from his horse.

"Lapsus eque Thomond, quantum, heu! se distat ab ipso! Insedit modo jam Vir- ceciditque lutum.

"How vast a gulf cross'd Thomond from his horse!

A man while seated-and when thrown, a corse!"

The following three epigrams were sent to Mr. Halhed by the Rev. Mr. Cane.

"Captain Macheath with passion fir'd,

A Polly, Lucy,— both admir'd,

Mais Halhed a plus admirè,

Car Les Graces sont ses Tiers consolidés! MARCH, 1856.

H

Ideas come, says Loccke, from sense,
As pounds the offspring are of pence.
With Halhed who would dare to strive,
Whose senses four excel all other's five!
Halhed, however smooth it run,
A man of taste, you hate a pun:
Yet I confess I still am led,

To think that Halhed is all head!"

Mr. Halhed thus replied

"Halhed admires-as well he may
Your charming 'Tiers consolidé,'
Where each in merit's high degree,
Stands representative of three-
And thus the united three combine
To form th' equivalent of nine.
Where is the mighty wonder then,
With every muse to guide your pen,
While Halhed's can no aid command,
Save a mere Hoddy-doddy's* hand;
That just comparison ensures
The odds of nine to one on yours;
His pen's a bulrush weak and vain ;

Yours a most potent matchless Cane."

Mr. Hastings, in the next letter, begs to be excused for his long silence caused in a great measure by indisposition, for which he consulted Dr. Vaughan, and afterwards Sir Henry Halford.

"Daylesford House, 16th May, 1809.

"MY DEAR HALHED,-Do not impute my long silence to neglect or to an indifference to the genuine affection that breathes in your letters, and marks your whole intercourse with me. When I received your letter, I was earnestly and incessantly engaged in answering twenty-one queries proposed to me by the Board of Agriculture; and as Mrs. Hastings had exempted me from the positive duty of writing to you, by making you, through Mrs. Halhed, acquainted with the return of health, I went on my way, saying, I will write to morrow, -a term definite in intention, but very indeterminate in practice: and the occupation which I mentioned continued so long, as to exclude every other, and to give my procrastination a kind of prescriptive right. But here I am; and not a line will I write upon any other paper till I have written all that I have to write upon this, already one-fourth wasted in apology.

"You already know that we have had the pleasure of an unexpected visit from your friends, Sir E. and L. J. Impey. The immediate occasion of it was alarming; but we had the great satisfaction to

* Old Nursery rhyme-" Hoddy-Doddy, all head and no body."

see her wear the looks and complexion of health, and her good spirits have uniformly accorded with their indications. Sir E. seems uncommonly well. I wish I could persuade him to rise earlier in a morning; but I despair of success, and have not attempted it. I do not know but I may, if it be but to give him an opportunity of combating my objection to his sleeping till ten, with his to my rising at five and six. My own case has something of novelty in it. I left Portland street a very invalid: I arrived almost well at Tettsworth, and the next day in perfect health at Daylesford, though my nights were infested with feverish returns, these however being perceptibly abating, I am now, and have been for some time past, in much better health than I had before my late indisposition: yet as I grew well a new disease succeeded,--a swelling in both my legs and feet. This increased to such a degree in my right foot as to be alarming, and its appearance to my sight disgusting. By Dr. Vaughan's prescription, I have taken for it sweet spirit of nitre diluted with imperial three times a day-but am not sensible of any amendment. Any exertion aggravates the affection of parts, and the flesh-brush instantly allays it. By the advice of a very acute experimental physician, I make my breakfast wait some minutes every morning for the exercise of the dumb bells, to the great exacerbation (is that the medical word?) of the morbid irritation which commonly precedes that meal......So much, and too much, of myself. I have great pleasure in being able to tell you, that my dear Mrs. Hastings is uncommonly well, and visits her farm on her poney in all weathers. I remember to have heard you more than once say, that poetry was prophetical of something that never entered into the mind of the composer of it. This sentiment was lately exemplified in a sonnet which I addressed to Mrs. Hastings about three weeks ago. It begins with-"Hail, ever blooming May!" Would you believe it? on the very first day of the month she ventured on horseback, and was caught by two hailstorms. I certainly predicted them, and most certainly by inspiration, but I can take my oath that I did not intend it. I bless you in my heart for your encomium on her goodness, and her virtues, and for those too I am ready with my oath, to attest them. She unites with me in affectionate regards to yourself, and dear Mrs. Halhed; and we both rejoice to hear of her amended health, and especially that its progress keeps pace with the spring; for I think I never witnessed a finer. Heaven bless you both, my dear friend!

"Since I wrote the above, Sir Elijah has intimated his and lady I.'s intention of parting from us next Monday, which I have opposed on the ground of her ladyship being evidently better in health than she was when she arrived. I do not know whether he left me undecided; I hope so. I have one or two calls to town, and their final determination may regulate mine. This excursion will enable me to adjust some points of consequence to the arrangement of my time, and one especially, which I have much at heart; to settle with you the time when you will give us the promised pleasure of being our guests. It had been our intention to solicit it at the same time that our friends had devoted to their visit, had we been in time appriz

ed of it. For the present, adieu, my friend. I am ever, with the most heartfelt affection, yours,

WARREN HASTINGS."

In his reply (dated 18th May, 1809) Mr. Halhed congratulates his friend on his restitution of health, as nature's triumph over art :

'God made the country and man made the town,'

"and made it a most execrable amalgam of all the impurities and of all the four elements in the natural world, and their antitypes in the moral. Escaped from these and the iatrical toads that fatten on them, into the pure regions that still retain a smack of the perfection in which their Creator fashioned them : nature has re-asserted her rights in you, and her claim for unlimited gratitude from all those who have the happiness to know you. As for the interlude of the dumb bells-if they confer an appetite for your breakfast-they are certainly beneficial: but if you would infer that by enlarging the interval from the pillow to the tea kettle, they augment an irritation already morbid: it is not to the belly we must apply the medicine, but to the irritability, a disease of which I have entirely cured myself, by simply bearing it. Perhaps a glass of factitious Spa-water taken at first rising, would qualify the acid of the stomach, and give a better appetite for the muffin an hour afterwards, with a greatly improved ability for well digesting it. Proceeding downwards we gradually approach the legs whose Odematous intumescence I lament as an inconvenience and an eyesore, and but little more. Throw nitre to the dogs and stick to the flesh-brush, is the language of experience, and that your own."

Of the two prescriptions we are free to confess that malgre what the sons of Esculapius may say, Mr. Halhed's appears to us to be the most professional and the shrewdest of the two. In his next letter Mr. Hastings confesses that he has derived benefit from Mr. Halhed's prescription; he also alludes to a versified edition of the debates in Parliament which Mr. Halhed used to send him periodically--and of which we should be glad to introduce a specimen or two, but that our limited space at present forbids.

From Mr. Hastings to Mr. Halhed.

"If I could, I would write you a letter of poesy :
You can do it with ease, but with me 'tis not so easy.
You possess the great art, which, if any, but few know,
To write ten score good verses, stans pede in uno;
To the hand from the head, as this dictates its plenty,
Inditing, and calamo writing currente.

And to speak the plain truth, I can't find in my conscience
To make you pay double for reading my nonsense;

For the cost of my letters in prose, though but four pence,
Is too much; but in rhyme, 'tis as dear as four more pence.

"This looks like one of Cobbet's papers, with a motto of his own composition prefixed to it, and not seldom one of his worst. I thank you, my dear friend, for the admirable continuation of your chronicle, and desire, in return, that you will go on with a new chapter at the close of every session of Parliament, only as long as I live and if I can, I will live long enough for you to make up a good sizeable octavo. Perhaps, in that period, things may take a new turn, and instead of absurdities to ridicule, and corruptions to censure, you may be perplexed by a choice of wise measures, and virtuous statesmen, claiming the best exertions of your genius in their commendation. Surely such a reformation may be expected from the laudable training of the flower of the British youth; one seminary of which filled Cavendish Square, in my own delighted sight, with barouches, and admiring spectators: "delighted," although I lost by it full thirty minutes in the attempt to traverse the thronged street from Mrs. Motte's door to Lady Blunt's, nearly opposite to it. You will be pleased to hear that the swelling of my legs has subsided, and come almost to their bearings, taking the word in every sense. This effect has been produced, neither by pills, by galvanism, by repose, nor by diet, but by, or in despite of, severe exercise of them, and evidently more than is good for them at the time that I impose it upon them. In other points I have literally conformed to your advice, and have got well. The advice was salutary, and I thank you for it, but more for your kind interest in my dear Mrs. Hastings' health, and more yet for the credit you attribute to her influence on mine, and for the many handsome things you say of her, to all which I am ready to subscribe, while my hand is in, before the registrar of Oxford, who has already just administered that sanction to the first process of a chancery suit in the Supreme Court of the Km. of Wurtemberg, in which I have chosen to be an adventurer. I return to Mrs. Hastings to say that she is very well, and will (I know) before I have closed this, charge me with her affectionate regards to you, and dear Mrs. Halhed. In these as in all her affections mine go pari passu. We are in the midst of our mowing and haymaking, in which there is every prospect of our going on swimmingly, with the option of being thankful for the preservation of our turnips, (which I prefer) or murmuring at the injury sustained by our hay. On this, and many other similar occasions my mind sustains itself by the maxim of a great philosopher and moralist,* "Its poise life's balance to vibration owes." If you have never met with it before, copy it, and put it by among your good things. Mr. Anderson, and his most amiable wife and daughter are our present guests, and contribute much to our present happiness, which is not diminished by the reflection frequently recurring, that when we part, we shall never probably meet again. "Adieu, my dear Halhed.

Your truly affectionate friend,
WARREN HASTINGS."

A quotation from one of Mr. Halhed's sonnets.