ODE TO SIGNOR RUBINI.
Great vocalist! that tak'st, with wondrous ease,
A rapid passage on the highest C's;
Thy compass beats the mariner's quite hollow,
For where it leads none but thyself can follow;
And then the wind, at will, 'tis thou canst raise,
By gentle airs, for which the public pays;
Thy skill e'en that of Orpheus far surpasses,
He charm'd wild beasts, but thou enchantest asses,
As in their stalls—places for donkeys fit—
With ears erect the dilettanti sit.
When hanging on the honey of thy lip,
Mellifluous harmony we seem to sip;
And, listening to the strain sent forth by thee,
A paradise the opera would be,
But for the little truth our purses teach,
That we are minus half a guinea each.
British Museum 2043—Curiosities of Ancient Times.
THE BRITISH MUSEUM TWO HUNDRED
YEARS HENCE.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science, which began its meetings at Bristol, has since been strongly recommended to go to Bath; and if it is not sent permanently to Coventry before the year 2043, we may conceive its having reached by that time a state of stagnancy in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury. As there will, of course, be antiquarians among them, imagination can easily picture them clinging fondly to St. Giles's, as the quarter inhabited by the Anglo-Greeks; and the members will, no doubt, be searching, a hundred years hence, for the fossil remains of petrified crows in the neighbourhood of the Rookery.
The following is an anticipatory report of the meeting of the Association, after having been cradled in the laps of time during the lapse of a couple of centuries.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE, APRIL 1, 2043.
Your Committee have the satisfaction to state that, their funds being thoroughly exhausted, they have been enabled to save the usual expense of travelling, and have taken advantage of the liberality of the Government for the purpose of visiting the British Museum. Your Committee remained some time at the outer gate, for the purpose of making some observations on two boxes, which it is understood have been there for sentries; but, as they have not discovered what a sentry is, your Committee conclude that the word must be a corruption of centuries.
On going through the court-yard the Association made some experiments upon the atmosphere, with the view of calculating the difference (by means of the differential calculus) between the air inside the gates and that which circulates on the outside; but your Committee are unable to state any satisfactory result to their arduous experiment.
On entering the hall of the Museum your Committee have to complain of being deprived of their walking-sticks; but this annoyance was in some degree compensated by their receiving in exchange some very curious pieces of tin, which are, no doubt, of very ancient origin. They were at once referred to the chairman of the mineralogical section, who pronounced them to be the coin generally in use in the nineteenth century, for the word tin is frequently met with, in old books, where money is clearly the article alluded to.
Upon reaching the great room your Committee were met by an officer of the Museum, who conducted them over the building, and pointed out to your Committee the chief objects of interest.
The Association had the satisfaction of looking at a very ancient machine, called the stocks, which served the double purpose of punishing offenders and regulating the money market. The chairman of your Committee was appointed to sit on the stocks, and did so for a considerable time, in the course of which he fully ascertained how they might have been available for punishment, but he is still at a loss to discover the monetary uses which our ancestors evidently put them to. It must be regarded as one of the lost arts, like chuck-farthing, and other mysteries, which are now only left to us in the pages of history.
Your Committee were greatly delighted by a series of portraits of a tribe of individuals, carrying flagelli, or whips, and whose noses were made the subject of a very learned paper by your president. The extreme redness of the point was formerly supposed to arise from drinking brandy; but your president having taken several successive draughts of that spirit, without any peculiar redness in the nose becoming immediately obvious, was prevented by exhaustion, ending in utter prostration, from continuing his very ingenious and interesting experiment. It is believed, by your Committee, that the redness of nose, which was characteristic of the old auriga, or coach-driver, arose from a constant habit of blushing, which the peculiar modesty of the race, as it is found alluded to in reports of police cases in past ages, would account for easily.
But the great attraction to your Committee consisted in the two celebrated figures of antiquity, known to the public as the Whig and Tory, by whom, according to old writers, this country was torn for a considerable period. Your committee congratulate themselves that they do not live in those shocking times, when, according to contemporary writers, the Whigs ruined the British Constitution four times in six years, and the Tories gave, in the same period, eleven death-blows to public liberty. How the Constitution ever was restored to health, or how liberty was brought to life, has greatly puzzled your Committee; but they have at last discovered that there were, in those days certains pills which eradicated everything; and, as mention is made in old books of various pillars of the state, your Committee have no hesitation in attributing the wondrous cures to the means alluded to.
Your Committee had almost forgotten to mention a very curious old machine, called a drop; and, taken in connexion with the black-letter phrase of "a drop too much," there can be no doubt that the drop now in the Museum was that which is constantly spoken of as "too much," by the old chroniclers.
The remains of a gibbet also gave rise to a curious discussion in one of the sections, and your Committee at last decided that the instrument was used by a hanging committee attached to a society of painters, who, under the pretext of executing justice, were in the habit of resorting to all sorts of cruelty.
The Association were likewise favoured with the perusal of a very scarce old volume, mysteriously labelled, "A tax-gatherer's Book;" from which your Committee are led to infer, that there were formerly a class of marauders who traversed the kingdom, going from door to door, and exacting sums of money from the inhabitants. To show the frivolous pretexts that sufficed for these plunderers to carry on their system of rapine, your Committee have only to observe that a demand was made on account of light and air, which were actually in those days paid for by the people in the form of what was called a window-tax.
Your Committee having concluded their inspection of the British Museum, returned into the open air; and a shower of rain coming on, they had an opportunity of making a series of observations on the effect which moisture produces upon the skin, and the power of the animal caloric, in the human foot, to resist for a time the chill ultimately engendered by walking into puddles.