Seated beside the Thunderer, you are to dispense the award to agricultural mortals. Have pity on your frail and erring brethren, and wield not the giant's strength tyrannically. But your faculties are as great as your fame; and as Julius Cæsar, in the midst of preparations for battle, marked the revolutions of the stars, so you, in the interval that elapses betwixt the publication of your high farming essays, take a glance at Ireland, and solve the enigma that had puzzled all preceding statesmen, and prescribe the cure for the chronic ailments of our unhappy neighbour. With a few flourishes of your pen, you have slain Blackwood and all his allies. The mind is proud of its triumphs in proportion to the reputed greatness of what it has overcome. Plutarch, in his life of Artaxerxes, tells us of a soldier who wounded King Cyrus in battle, and who grew thereupon so arrogant that in a short space after he lost his wits. I fear for you, even in the midst of your triumphs, for you are manifestly perturbed. At a time when every one had treated you with unexampled gentleness and courtesy, you complain of being upbraided, and of having lost the smiles of men of rank. Can it be that the monitor within is pricking you for your left-handed advocacy of the farmers' interest? The taint of a green and yellow melancholy is on you. That curious old writer, Felix Plater, tells us, with high humour, of a certain one who fancied that he had some of Aristophanes' frogs in his belly, and who studied physic seven years, and took the tour of Europe, with a view of relieving himself. Your itinerancy may be salubrious, and tend to evacuate the croaker. But if not, happy are you to have such a doctor—the crutch-destroyer, I mean—as your "guide, philosopher, and friend." By his nimble manipulations, he will easily effect the happy exorcism of every obstruction; and, having him as your Mæcenas, well may you feel
"Divinity within you breeding wings,
Wherewith to scorn the earth."
If I have contributed in any degree, by this agreeable epistle, to abate and dissolve your present flatulency, it will be a source of delightful reflection to me in the evening of life.
Cato.
THE CLEARING OF THE GLENS.
I.
They'll speak of him for many a year,
In Britain's sad decline,
In other lands, perchance, than this,
Across the weltering brine.
They'll speak of him who drove them forth
In alien fields to toil,
Who forced them from their fathers' hearths,
The children of the soil!
II.
Amidst the deserts of the West
When evening shadows fall,
Around their aged grandsire's knees
The babes will gather all—
And "Tell us, grandsire," thus they'll speak,
"O tell us yet again,
Of that dear native land of yours
That lies beyond the main.