all mothers similarly circumstanced was, to ship off their daughters to that country, where European ladies were at a premium.

I'M GOING TO BOMBAY.

My hair is brown, my eyes are blue,
And reckoned rather bright;
I'm shapely, if they tell me true,
And just the proper height;
My skin has been admired in verse,
And called as fair as day

If I am fair, so much the worse,
I'm going to Bombay.

At school I passed with some éclat;
I learn'd my French in France;
De Wint gave lessons how to draw
And D'Egville how to dance;
Crevelli taught me how to sing,
And Cramer how to play
It really is the strangest thing,
I'm going to Bombay!

By Pa and Ma I'm daily told
To marry now's my time,
For though I'm very far from old,
I'm rather in my prime.

They say while we have any sun

We ought to make our hay
And India has so hot a one,

I'm going to Bombay!

My cousin writes from Hydrapot
My only chance to snatch,
And says the climate is so hot,
It's sure to light a match.*)

She's married to a son of Mars,
With very handsome pay,

And swears I ought to thank my stars
I'm going to Bombay!

She says that I shall much delight
To taste their Indian treats,

But what she likes may turn me quite,
Their strange outlandish meats.

*) Pun on match, in German Streichhölzchen, and match, Heiratspartie.

If I can eat rupees') who knows?
Or dine, the Indian way,
On doolies and on bungalows
I'm going to Bombay!

She says that I shall much enjoy
I don't know what she means
To take the air, and buy some toy
In my own palankeens.

I like to drive my pony chair,
Or ride our dapple grey,
But elephants are horses there
I'm going to Bombay!

That fine new teak-built ship, the Fox,
A 12) Commander Bird,
Now lying in the London docks,
Will sail on May the third.
Apply for passage or for freight,
To Nichol, Scott, and Gray;
Pa has applied, and sealed my fate
I'm going to Bombay!

My heart is full, my trunks as well,
My mind and caps made up;

My corsets, shap'd by Mrs. Bell,
Are promised ere I sup;

With boots and shoes, Rivarta's best,
And dresses by Ducé,

And a special license in my chest,

I'm going to Bombay!

Hood's Up the Rhine is brimful of broad humour, and reminds us strongly of Smollett's Humphrey Clinker. The travellers are respectively, the hypochondriac Uncle Orchard; Mrs. Wilmot, his recently widowed sister, who wishes to be thought a very interesting personage; her talkative "woman", Martha Penny, and the sprightly nephew, Frank Somerville. Like Smollett, Hood has

1) The young lady is mistaken in supposing the rupee to be a sort of pea. It is a silver coin worth about 2 s. sterling. The dooly and the palankeen, or palanquin, are two forms of a bamboo carriage, borne by four men on their shoulders. The bungalow, properly speaking, is a small one-story house; but it sometimes means a small inn or refreshment station for travellers. and

2) A ship is classed A 1 when built of the best materials, not more than five years old.

here adopted the epistolary form, and the letters are in prose, but almost continually interspersed with incidental verses. As the reader will guess, the subject is the tour of an eccentric English family on the continent.

We shall conclude our notice of Hood's poetical works with a specimen of his punning style:

FAITHLESS NELLY GRAY.

Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms!')

Now as they bore him off the field,
Said he, "Let others shoot,
For here I leave my second leg,

And the forty-second foot."")

Now Ben he loved a pretty maid,
Her name was Nelly Gray;

So he went to pay her his devours [devoirs]
When he'd devoured his pay;

But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off!3)

O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!

Is this your love so warm?

The love that loves a scarlet coat,
Should be more uniform!')

She said, "I loved a soldier once,
For he was blithe and brave;

But I will never have a man,

With both legs in the grave!

Before you had those timber toes,
Your love I did allow,

But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now!"

1) Arms; in German, Arme, or Waffen.

2) Foot or infantry regiment.

3) To take off; in German, abnehmen, or sich über etwas lustig machen.

4) Uniform; in German consequent, or Regimentsuniform.

"O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty's call I left my legs
In Badajos's breaches.

O false and fickle Nelly Gray,
I know why you refuse!
Though I've no feet, some other man
Is standing in my shoes!1)

I wish I ne'er had seen your face!
But now a long farewell!

For you will be my death;

alas!

You will not be my Nell!" (knell)2)

So round his melancholy neck

A rope he did entwine,

And, for his second time in life,
Enlisted in the Line.

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs,
And, as his legs were off, of course
He soon was off his legs.

And there he hung till he was dead
As any nail) in town;

For though distress had cut him up,
It could not cut him down!

A dozen men sat on his corpse,

To find out why he died

And they buried Ben in four cross-roads,*)
With a stake in his inside!

R. H. Barham.

The Rev. Richard Harris Barham (17881845), poet and humorist, furnishes us with a striking example of cheerfulness and the love of innocent mirth co-existing with the exercise of one of the gravest pro

1) To stand in one's shoes is, to take one's place (Jemand ausstechen).

door.'

2) Todtenglocke.

Alluding to the popular simile: "as dead as a nail in a

4) This was formerly the usual punishment of suicides. There is a pun in the last line on a stake of wood and a beafsteak.

fessions. Mr. Barham was a royal chaplain and a minor canon of St. Paul's, and no man was more assiduous or earnest in the discharge of his clerical duties, but this nowise detracted from the pleasure he took in the society of Theodore Hook, the elder Charles Matthews, and the other wits and literary celebrities of the day. Nor is this an isolated example. Dr. South, Sterne, Swift, Churchill, Sydney Smith, Whately, were all, like Barham, men distinguished for wit and humour, and all were clergymen of the Church of England. Mr. Barham has left us a novel, entitled My Cousin Nicholas; but his reputation is based on his inimitable Ingoldsby Legends, which he contributed to Bentley's Miscellany, under the signature of Thomas Ingoldsby. These legends, a number of which are in prose, are in part humorous versions of old stories, and in part the invention of the author. One of the most amusing, founded on a legend existing among the Cistercian monks, is called

THE JACKDAW OF RHEIMS.1)

The Jackdaw sat on the Cardinal's chair!
Bishop and abbot and prior were there!
Many a monk and many a friar,

Many a knight and many a squire

With a great many more of lesser degree,

In sooth a goodly company;

And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee.
Never, I ween,

Was a prouder seen,

Read of in books, or dreamt of in dreams,

Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims!

1) Tunc miser Corvus adeo conscientiae stimulis compunctus fuit, et execratio eum tantopere excarneficavit, ut exinde tabescere inciperet, nec amplius crocitaret. ... Tunc abbas sacerdotibus mandavit ut rursus furem absolverent; quo facto, Corvus, omnibus mirantibus, propediem convaluit, et pristinam sanitatem recuperavit. De Illust. Ord. Cisterc.