TO CORRESPONDENTS. 



THE author of the Corn Law Rhymes is a man of fine and striking genius ; it is 

 his misfortune, therefore, to be followed by a race of imitators, who content them- 

 selves with tracking his poetical footsteps at as respectful a distance as possible. It 

 has been our fate, during the past two months, to receive poems, from eminent un- 

 known authors, on subjects connected with every possible branch of mechanical 

 science, and on every topic that foreign and domestic policy can suggest. We have 

 had Hymns to Hydraulic Engines, and Lyrical Essays on Levers. Mr. Sadler's 

 Factory Regulation Bill seems to have aroused half the poetical imagination of the 

 country ; and the Duke of Buckingham's unborn Reform Bill has cast its shadow 

 before 'in the shape of as much nonsense as his Grace could conveniently talk in a 

 whole session. The March of Truth has set at least a hundred lyres at work ; and 

 the last new-invented pulley has acted upon more chords than the patentee 

 imagined. We had intended to have gratified our contributors and surprised the 

 public, with a selection from these poetical helps to science and morality ; but we 

 must for the present leave the Population and Political Economy poets in the shade, 

 and give only a few lines of one of the ninety-seven odes and oddities that have 

 sprung from the recent Insurrection at Jamaica. 



' View the slave he spies his master 



See him cringing at the sight, 

 Lashed to make him labour faster, 



Answer tell me is this right 1 

 Does a noble-minded nation 



Treat a black man as a brute 1 

 Is the negro no relation 



Sprang he not from Adam's root ? 

 Yes, I hail the hour of freedom 



For the British and their slaves ; 

 Let their ransom be agreed on 



With the money-making knaves. 

 Then, in truth, will Freedom shed her 



Halo round your mighty name 

 Let unswerving justice spread her 



Wings o'er black and white the same'.' 



This,.though not first-rate poetry, is better than the Birth-day Odes, and Blockhead- 

 isms to Britannia, which the Pyes and Whiteheads were wont to edify the world with. 



For the Address to a Steam-Engine on the premises of Mr. Clowes, in Stamford 

 Street, we cannot find space ; but we are pleased with it for one reason at least 

 that it has suggested to us a very profitable and pleasurable termination to these 

 unimportant remarks, in an Apologue which we here proceed to copy. It is, if we 

 mistake not, from the pen of Mr. Leigh Hunt, which will especially recommend it ; 

 it treats of that same PRINTING BY STEAM, which has just brought it to our recol- 

 lection ; and above all, it is in our estimation, as beautiful in a poetical as in a phi- 

 losophical sense. Here, then, is Leigh Hunt's Apologue on Printing by Steam. 



During a wonderful period of the world, the kings of the earth leagued themselves 



together to destroy all opposition, to root out, if they could, the very thoughts of man- 

 kind. Inquisition was made for blood. The ears of the grovelling lay in wait for every 

 murmur. On a sudden, during this great hour of danger, there arose in a hundred parts 

 of the world, a cry, to which the cry of the Blatant Beast was as a Whisper. It pro. 

 ceeded from the wonderful multiplication of an extraordinary Creature, which had already 

 turned the cheeks of the tyrants pallid. It groaned and it grew loud . it spoke with a 

 hundred tongues : it grew fervidly on the ear, like the noise of a million of wheels. And 

 the sound of a million of wheels was in it, together with other marvellous and awful 

 voices. There was the sharpening of swords, the braying of trumpets, the neighing of 

 war-horses, the laughter of solemn voices, the rushing by of lights, the movement of 

 impatient feet, a tread as if the world were coming. And ever and anon there were pauses 

 with " a still small voice," which made a trembling in the night-time ; but still the glow- 

 ing sound of the wheels renewed itself; gathering early towards the morning. And when 

 you came up to one of these creatures, you saw, with fear and reverence, it's mighty con- 

 formation, being like wheels indeed, and a great vapour. And ever and anon the vapour 

 boiled, and the wheels went rolling, and the creature threw out of its mouth visible words, 

 that fell into the air by millions, and spoke to the uttermost parts of the earth. And the 

 nations, (for it was a loving though a fearful Creature) fed upon its words like the air 

 they breathed : and the Monarchs paused, for they knew tlieir masters. 



