uch,
has figured time out of mind in allegorical pictures. The sense in
which it was used by me is plain from the context; at least, it
would be plain to any one but a fisher for faults, predisposed to
carp at some things, to dab at others, and to flounder in all. But I
am possibly in error. It is the female swine, perhaps, that is
profaned in the eyes of the Oriental tourist. Men find strange ways
of marking their intolerance; and the spirit is certainly strong
enough, in Mr. W.'s works, to set up a creature as sacred, in sheer
opposition to the Mussulman, with whom she is a beast of abomination.
It would only be going the whole sow.--I am, dear Sir, yours very
truly, THOS. HOOD.

"Close, close your eyes with holy dread,
And weave a circle round him thrice,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise."--COLERIDGE.

"It's very hard them kind of men
Won't let a body be."--_Old Ballad_.

A wanderer, Wilson, from my native land,
Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee,
Where rolls between us the eternal sea,
Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand,--
Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall;
Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call;
Across the wavy waste between us stretch'd,
A friendly missive warns me of a stricture,
Wherein my likeness you have darkly etch'd,
And though I have not seen the shadow sketch'd,
Thus I remark prophetic on the picture.

I guess the features:--in a line to paint
Their moral ugliness, I'm not a saint.
Not one of those self-constituted saints,
Quacks--not physicians--in the cure of souls,
Censors who sniff out mortal taints,
And call the devil over his own coals--
Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God,
Who write down judgments with a pen hard-nibb'd;
Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod,
Commending sinners, not to ice thick-ribb'd,
But endless flames, to scorch them up like flax--
Yet sure of heav'n themselves, as if they'd cribb'd
Th' impression of St. Peter's keys in wax!

Of such a character no single trace
Exists, I know, in my fictitious face;
There wants a certain cast about the eye;
A certain lifting of the nose's tip;
A certain curling of the nether lip,
In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky;
In brief it is an aspect deleterious,
A face decidedly not serious,
A face profane, that would not do at all
To make a face at Exeter Hall,--
That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray,
And laud each other face to face,
Till ev'ry farthin