London in 1857. 507 



That microscopic aid reveals 



New worlds in every rose, 

 In every gem that studs the leaf, 



In every flower that blows. 



The mite is not so passing large, 



His bristles somewhat small, 

 Yet when he scratches one of these 



A hundred cities fall. 



Earthquakes and mitequakes thus may be 



Proportionably right, 

 One clears base vermin from the world, 



The other from the mite. 



He said but here his strain was mixed 



With visions swift that rose, 

 The drowsy hum- drum of the song 



Had lulled me to repose. 



I slept, how long I cannot tell, 



But started at the sound 

 Of people struggling to get out 



Through darkness most profound. 



LONDON IN 1857, 



OR A 



PROSPECTIVE PIECE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



MUCH fatigued with business for this month, June, was very busy 

 to me I returned late one evening home to my own snug house. 

 Be it known to all the world that I am a bachelor, and that my pros- 

 perity increasing year by year in , a most agreeable, I was 

 going to say, but I amend my phrase by substituting the words 

 what might have been a most agreeable ratio, I have not yet been in- 

 duced to take a wife to myself, and struggle on with the world for some 

 end and purpose. Wealth is but a cumbersome thing in some situ- 

 ations, and I know no situation so unenviable as that of the man who 

 looks around him and sees an accumulation of that which will pur- 

 chase all the good things of this life life and health excepted while 

 the sad and dispiriting certainty that there is no one else in tbe world 

 to enjoy it with him no wife, no children, to share the blessing with 

 its solitary possessor, and from whom he can derive happiness by 

 imparting it presses with sick and dreary heaviness upon his mind. 

 But I am straying from my point. Where can be the benefit of 

 moralizing, when I am almost clear that I am the only person of my 

 own unfortunate nation that can now peruse these lines ? It may then 

 be asked of me why I write ? My answer is, that I cannot help it. 

 I try to drown my recollections in presenting them on paper for the 

 satisfaction of my own mind, and to make the misery to which my 



