1832.] Our Anniversary. 697 



he was alone, so we stood still and listened for a moment j our friend was 

 soliloquising to the following effect, as nearly as we remember. 



" So thou art come at last, beautiful, beautiful May, and thine eyes are blue and 

 thy tresses golden, and the sound of thy speaking honey-sweet as when I last be- 

 held thee ! Many a dark-plumed bird that hath long pined for thee in the cold wet 

 grass by the field-side will lift up its little head, and open its bright brown eyes 

 with joy at thy coming, and pour out its song of gladness at thy feet but no heart 

 can love thee more sincerely than mine, beautiful, beautiful May ! Like a gentle 

 and meek-faced sister dost thou visit me in the lonely and mournful cell of my 

 earthly prison house ! Sweetly hath the poet said of thee that thou shalt live for 

 ever ; age cannot dim the lustre of thine eye, years cannot hush the music of thy 

 footsteps. Thou are still" 



Rhapsodising as usual, said we, breaking into our friend's library and 

 his poetical apostrophe at the same instant. 



Algernon Sydney (the reader could not hesitate for a moment in 

 assigning the foregoing passage to our poet-laureate) was standing with 

 his back to the door, with a bunch of flowers in one hand, and Spenser's 

 Fairy Queene in the other. The abruptness of our salutation made him 

 turn round, and he came forward to receive us with all the warmth of 

 manner by which he is characterised. 



" Hush ! my dear Marmaduke, my favourite robin has just perched 

 upon the window." 



" The omnibus has just driven up to the door," was our reply. 



Sydney first looked at his robin and then at us j and having put the 

 Fairy Queene into his pocket, and the bunch of flowers into his waistcoat, 

 we descended the marble stairs together. 



We will not stay to enumerate the difficulties we encountered in our 

 kind office of taking up our contributors. Some were not ready and 

 some were not up ; Mr. Oliphant Maxwell was just finishing a romance, 

 and the Pythagorean was occupied in an essay upon the Transmigration of 

 Souls. At length, however, all was arranged, and we galloped along 

 Piccadilly full of joy find anticipation. Old Mortality had brought Dr. 

 Johnson's walking-stick with him, and the antiquary had kindly put in 

 his pocket the manuscript of a very learned and lucid paper upon the 

 Physiognomy of the Nations of the Earth which existed before Adam, and 

 the dissertation was rendered still more interesting by some illustrative 

 drawings from the pencil of the celebrated Blake. 



" I have just thought of a riddle," suddenly exclaimed Mr. Wea- 

 thercock. 



<( Let us hear it," we all cried. 



" Why is Mr. Patrick Grant like a certain Hebrew Lawgiver ?" An- 

 swer " Because he commanded The Sun to stand still." 



" I object to that pun as blasphemous," shouted Mr. Ebenezer Muckle- 

 wrath, rising with great warmth, " the judgment 



" Don't tread upon my stick, Mr. Muckle wrath," said Old Mortality, 

 " my late friend Dr. Samuel " 



" There is a very erudite and in every way delightful prolusion on this 

 subject in the treatise of that illustrious Russian scholar Bowerskiwinz, 

 De Solis Ortu, which " the Antiquary was interrupted in his discourse 

 by a loud shriek from the Woman-Hater. 



" Treason and death let me get out, that horrid Hell-fire Dick has 

 taken a girl on the box I have been ready to faint for this last half-hour 

 without being able to divine the cause let me out let me out !" 



M.M. New Scries. VOL. XIV. No. 78. 3 A 



