al, and social; the harmful consequence of
over-expenditure to ape the hobbies or grandeur of the wealthier;
foolish education beyond one's sphere, as the baker's daughter taking
lessons in Italian, and opera-stricken butcher's-boys strumming the
guitar; immoral tendencies, gambling, drinking, and other dissipations;
and the aggregate of discomforts, of every sort and kind; with cures for
all these evils; and to end finally by a grand climax of supplication,
invocation, imprecation, resignation, and beatification, in the regular
crash of a stout-expiring overture.

It's all very well, objects reader, and very easy to consider this done;
but the difficulty is--not so much to do it, answers writer, as to
escape the bother of prolixity by proving how much has been done, and
how speedily all might be even completed, had poor poesy in these
ticketing times only a fair field and no disfavour; for there is at hand
good grist, ready ground, baked and caked, and waiting for its eaters.
But in this age of prose-devouring and verse-despising, hardy indeed
should I be, if I adventured to bore the poor, much-abused,
uncomplaining public with hundreds of lines out of a dormant epic; the
very phrase is a lullaby; it's as catching as a yawn; well will it be
for me if my thread-bare domino conceals me, for whose better fame could
brook the scandal of having fathered or fostered so slumbering an
embryo?--Let then a few shreds and patches suffice--a brick or two for
the house: and verily I know they will, be they never so scanty; for
what man of education does not now entertain a just abhorrence of the
Muses, the nine antiquated maiden aunts destined for ever to be
pensioned on that money-making nice young man, Mammon's great
heir-at-law, Prose Prose, Esq.?

With humblest fear, then, and infinite apology, behold, in all sober
seriousness, what the labour of such a file as I am might betimes work
into a respectable commencement; I don't pretend it _is_ one; but
_valeat quantum_, take it as it stands, unweeded, unpruned, uncared-for,
unaltered,

Home, happy word, dear England's ancient boast,
Thou strongest castle on her sea-girt coast,
Thou full fair name for comfort, love, and rest,
Haven of refuge found and peace possest,
Oasis in the desert, star of light
Spangling the dreary dark of this world's night,
All-hallowed spot of angel-trodden ground
Where Jacob's ladder plants its lowest round,
Imperial realm amid the