III. When a paradox you stick to,
I will never contradict you.

IV. When I talk and you are heedless,
I will show no anger needless.

V. When your speeches are absurd,
I will ne'er object a word.

VI. When you, furious, argue wrong,
I will grieve and hold my tongue.

VII. Not a jest or humorous story
Will I ever tell before ye :
To be chidden for explaining,
When you quite mistake the meaning.

VIII. Never more will I suppose

You can taste my verse or prose.

IX. You no more at me shall fret,
While I teach and you forget.

X. You shall never hear me thunder
When you blunder on, and blunder.

XI. Show your poverty of spirit,

And in dress place all your merit ;
Give yourself ten thousand airs:
That with me shall break no squares.

XII. Never will I give advice

Till you please to ask me thrice:
Which if you in scorn reject,
"Twill be just as I expect.

PATRIOTIC MILITARY SONGS

OVE of country and love of arms are common to all mankind, and have been held in honour from the earliest recorded times.

If such a melody as that which makes the Switzer weep, and impels him to his native home, be not the possession of all lands, there is some key-note which has a lively echo in the heart of every people, and vibrates to the call of country-something else as potent as the Rans des Vaches to awaken patriotism.

How charmingly De Beranger makes the bird of passage serve this purpose in his exquisite song "Les Hirondelles!"—

Captif au rivage du Maure,

Un guerrier, courbé sous ses fers,
Disait Je vous revois encore,

Oiseaux ennemis des hivers.
Hirondelles, que l'esperance

Suit jusqu'en ces brûlants climats,
Sans doute vous quittez la France:

De mon pays ne me parlez vous pas ?"

The idea of the poet, in this first verse of his lovely elegy, was verified in fact; for M. Perrotin gives a note in his "Euvres Complètes" of Beranger, telling us that the French soldiers, made prisoners of war by the Arabs in the late Algerian campaigns, were wont to sing this song, but that, before its conclusion, tears used to choke their utterance.

Not only is love of-country universal, but it is the impression of every people that their own country is the best.

"Such is the patriot's boast where'er we roam

His first, best country, ever is at home."

Few are the stoics who boast of being citizens of the world, elevated above what they are pleased to call the prejudice of prizing one nation above another-whose comprehensive wisdom affects to estimate the whole human race with equal consideration, or, rather, passionate indifference. Few they are, and well they are so; and perhaps they are fewer than even they themselves think. Why, even that worldly, witty maxim-writer, Rochefoucauld, in the midst of all his satire and sarcasm and mistrust of human virtue, admits the existence of that of patriotism, and in terms of tenderness, rare with him

"L'accent du pays où l'on est né, demeure dans l'esprit et dans le cœur, comme dans la language."

The gentle and conscientious Cowper exclaims--

'England, with all thy faults, I love thee still-
My country!"

Which apostrophe, if I remember rightly, the proud Byron in his angry exile quoted. Again, Byron exhibits recollections of England which all his anger could not quench, thus—

"On, on, through meadows, managed like a garden,

A paradise of hops and high production;

For, after years of travel by a bard in

Countries of greater heat but lesser suction,

A green field is a sight which makes him pardon
The absence of that more sublime construction,
Which mixes up vines, olives, precipices,
Glaciers, volcanoes, oranges, and ices."

And then, with characteristic versatility, and love of contrast and the grotesque, he adds—

But through this veil of fun peeps out a latent love of country. As for the love of arms, that is evidently inherent in our nature, from the fact of children playing at soldiers. All arms are imitated; the natural state of infantry is not enough. Tommy aspires to the cavalry, his gouty grandpapa's cane, used to soberer paces, is converted into a war-horse, and he charges round the room, an imaginary guardsman; while Bobby, who affects the artillery, is boring a hole with a spike of red-hot iron into the bone of some timid sheep's trotter, to make a cannon; and possibly the military cocked-hats of bcth are formed out of some whity-brown, which was once the wrapper of some parcel from the shop of Obediah Smallsoul, of the Peace Society. This love pervades the sports of riper years: it has coloured the national games of the civilised and the savage-the Pyrrhie dance of the accomplished Greek has its counterpart, even now, in the war-dance of the South-sea Islander and the American Red Indian. This love " 'grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength." To be a soldier is the aspiration of most young men, a desire too often disturbing the equanimity of some long-headed father, who had intended for his young Hotspur a more profitable pursuit. And this admiration of the

"Pride, pomp, and circumstance of gloricus war,'

is shared by woman; for if she cannot be a soldier herself, she is most ready to bestow her love on him who is one: and this feeling must have been predominant from the earliest ages, for Pagan records bear evidence of it in the myth of Mars and Venus.

Now, these two passions of our nature, always very strong in the Irish, became, from the peculiarity of Ireland's political position, accidentally strengthened. Nearly up to the end of the last century, the great mass of the youth of Ireland were forbidden the honourable profession of arms at home, and were thus forced to leave the land they loved to enjoy the forbidden desire, which they exercised abroad; and in his exile, the love of the Irishman for his country increased—

.

for when do we love our country so much as when we are absent from it? Other historic evidence might be given to account for an extra, indeed almost morbid, love of country, on the part of the Irish. The Switzer (already alluded to) has been adduced as an example of patriotism by Goldsmith, who says that this land of wildness, sterility, and poverty is not the less, but the more prized, by the native, and thus accounts for it:—

Now, Ireland is not sterile, but wild enough in many respects, and has been (from causes not of her own engendering and beyond her reach to cure) too long impoverished, and the physical tempest is not less potent in making the Switzer cling to "the mother's breast," than the political storm has been in similarly attaching the Irishman. I witnessed, once, a touching proof of the passionate love the Irish peasant bears his native land. A party of labourers had just arrived in the packet-boat from England, where they had been reaping the wheat-harvest, and crowded to the vessel's side, eager to jump ashore; and when they did so, they knelt down and kissed their mother earth.

As for their gallant bearing as soldiers, the annals of England's wars are sufficient testimony—whether the Irish fought for or against her; and the recently-instituted military order-Victoria cross of valour-gave ample evidence, in its first distribution, of the same still-existing valour of the Irishman on the battle-field. And here may be recorded an anecdote of an Irish regiment, so characteristic in every way, that its appropriateness justifies me, I trust, in relating it, without my being open to the charge of national vaingloriousness. A fort was to be stormed; the day looked to for the assault was the 18th of March, but a request was forwarded to the officer in command by the Irish regiment, suggesting that operations might be a little hastened, and the assault delivered on the 17th-St. Patrick's day-in which case the whole regiment volunteered to lead the attack, as they would like "to have a bit of a skrimmage, and do something for the honour of ould Ireland on that day." The request was complied with, and at day-break on the 17th, the band of the regiment struck up "St. Patrick's Day ;" and to that lively measure away they went, with a ringing cheer, and the fort was