To snatch from her altars a wreath and a name;
Some have sought honour's death on the field or the wave;
Some have found in the land of the stranger a grave!
The chain is now broken, the links sever'd all,
That united the hearts in my Father's Old Hall!
PORTRAIT GALLERY.—No. IV.
CANNON FAMILY.—JOURNEY TO BOULOGNE.
When Alexander the Great was gazetted commander-in-chief of the Macedonian forces, and was concocting the eighteen manœuvres at the Horse-guards of that celebrated country; when he was about fighting Darius, Xerxes, and Porus; when Cæsar was invading Gaul and Britain; when the Benedictine monks were compiling "L'Art de verifier les dates;" when Sterne was writing Tristram Shandy; when Burton was anatomizing melancholy; when the companions of Columbus were puzzling their brains to find out how an egg could stand on end; when Mrs. Glass was concocting her cookery-book, and Bayle his dictionary; their minds were as smooth and as calm as a fish-pond, a milk-bowl, a butter-boat, an oil-cruet, compared with the speculative and prospective anxieties of all the Cannons as they were rattled on towards Dover, on their way to the land of promise, where milk and honey were to be found flowing,—longevity in apothecaries' shops,—modesty purchased at milliners' counters,—and decorum taught by opera-dancers. In these Utopian dreams, England was considered an uninhabitable region of fogs, mists, tyranny, corruption, consumption, and chilblains; the fate of Nineveh was denounced on London,—the modern Babylon; and, had it been burning from Chelsea bun-house to Aldgate pump, and from the Elephant and Castle to the Wheatsheaf at Paddington, the Cannons would not have dared to cast "a lingering look behind them" without dreading the lot of the Lots.