with tenderness
Her darling shrine, the Minerva Press,
In the street of Leadenhall.
This was her sacred haunt, and here
Her name was most adored,
Her chosen here officiated.
And hence her oracles emanated,
And breathed the Goddess in every word.
She pass'd from the east to the west, and paused
In New Burlington-street awhile,
To inspire a few puffs for Colburn and Co.
And indite some dozen novels or so
In the fashionable style.
* * * * *
Then turning her own Magazine to inspect,
She was rather at fault, as of late
The colour and series both were new;
But the Goddess, with discernment true,
Detected it by the weight.
She cross'd the Channel next, and peep'd
At Dublin; but the zeal
Of the liberty boys soon put her to flight.
And she dropp'd her mantle in her fright,
Which fell on Orator Shiel.
Thence sped she to the Land of Cakes,
The land she loves and its possessors;
She loves its Craniologists,
Political Economists,
And all Scotch _mists_ and Scotch Professors.
And chiefly she on McCulloch smiled,
As a mother smiles on her darling child,
Or a lady on her lover;
Then, bethinking her of Parliament,
She hasten'd South, but ere she went,
She promised if nothing occurr'd to prevent,
To return when the Session was over.
_Blackwood's Magazine._
* * * * *
CANNIBALISM.
In great cities, cannibalism takes an infinite variety of shapes. In the
neighbourhood of St. James's-street there are numerous slaughter-houses,
where men are daily consumed by the operation of cards and dice; and
where they are caught by the same bait, at which Quin said he should
have infallibly bitten. A similar process is likewise carried on in
'Change Alley, on a great scale; not to speak of that snare especially
set for widows and children, called a "joint stock speculation." But
your cannibal of cannibals is a parliament patron. Here, a great borough
proprietor swallows a regiment at a single gulp; and there, the younger
son of a lord ruminates over a colony till the very crows cannot find a
dinner in it; and there again, a duke or a minister, himself and his
family, having first "supped full of horrors," casts a diocese to the
side-table, to be mumbled at leisure by his son's tutor. The town is
occasionally very indignant and very noisy against the gouls of
Surgeons' Hall, because they live upon the dead carcasses of their
fello
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