TO THE GRIFFIN.
(By Calverlerius Rusticanus.)
Griffin, who benignly beamest
(So to speak) upon the Strand,
To the rustic eye thou seemest
Quite superlatively grand.
Griffin, grim and grimy Griffin,
Few, Joe tells me, will agree
With my artless numbers, if in
Undiluted praise of thee.
Critics, so he says, by dozens
Swear thou couldst not well be worse,
Yet from one poor country cousin's
Pen accept a tribute verse.
Some of London's statues now are
Fêted richly once a year;
Some—it seems a shame, I vow—are
Fated to oblivion there.
Once a year a primrose bower
Draws the folks around for miles,
Dizzy blossoms into flower,
Almost into "wreathèd smiles."
Once a year by all the town o'er-
-whelmed in bays is Gordon seen,
Countless wreaths recording "Brown (or
Jones) thus keeps thy memory green."
Once a year King Charles's statue
Paragraphs jocose invites,
Wreathed with flowers by infatu-
-ated modern Jacobites.
Thus their substance people waste on
This queer decorative fit—
Wreaths are sometimes even placed on
Mere nonentities like Pitt.
But—I cannot think what Joe meant—!
No one—so he said to me—
In his most expansive moment
E'er has twined a wreath for thee!
So I cast—in no derision—
From my 'bus-top garden-seat
These few violets, with precision,
At what I must call thy feet.
'Tis not that thy mien is stately,
'Tis not that thy grace is rare,
'Tis not that I care so greatly
For thy quaint heraldic air;
But contemptuous men neglect thee,
Load thee with invective strange,
So with violets I have decked thee,
And with verses, as a change.
The New Discovery.—"Argon" is described as "a gaseous constituent." In most constituencies can be found plenty of "Argons."
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF; OR, THE MODERN ORACLE OF AMMON.
"The people (the Libyans) deeming themselves not Egyptians, and being discontented with the institutions, sent to the Oracle of Ammon, saying that they had no relation to the Egyptians. The god, however, said, 'that all the country which the Nile irrigated was Egypt.'"—Herodotus, II., 15. B.C. 452.
"I stated that, in consequence of these claims of ours and the claims of Egypt in the Nile Valley, the British sphere of influence covered the whole of the Nile waterway."—Sir E. Grey in House of Commons, A.D. 1895.
John Bull. "You see, Nilus, the Father of History and I are of the same way of thinking. So you're all right, my Boy, while I'm here!"