Punch and Judy. 
I recommend them as the best specific 
In hypochondriae or nervous cases : 
Some fly to women, but the cure’s prolific 
Of other ills, and mischiefs, and disgraces : 
Others to wine—but wine is soporific, 
And leaves at last more pangs than it displaces ; 
Drugs are a wretched stimulant, and gaming 
The virtuous muse would be ashamed of naming. 
But see that group, well worthy Wilkie’s hand, 
Instinct with animation’s eager glow! 
There children, wrapt in dumb amazement, stand ; 
For wonder half forbids their joy to flow. 
The labourer, at that wizard’s high command, 
Stops from his work, or can his meal forego ; 
Though time and drudgery have had power to plough 
Their deep-lined furrows on his honest brow. 
The mother there, with infant in her arms, 
Puling and weak, yet sooths him at the sight ; 
With Punch dispels his querulous alarms, 
Herself not all-unconscious of delight. 
There curious imps, in boyhood’s ragged charms, 
Would peep behind the scenes—to know aright 
How those strange feats that theatre can grace, 
Which just before wasa small empty space. 
_ Yet some would, like the Frenchman, wish to buy 
Great Punch, and keep him for their recreation ; 
Unknowing that the moral alchemy 
Which turns their tears to laughter, hasits station, 
Not in the prating puppets perched on high, 
But him below, without whose operation 
A sudden stillness would the scene benumb, 
And Punch be spiritless, and Judy dumb. 
Thus is it with the world—for I believe 
Punch is the world’s best emblem, on the whole :— 
While whirls the vast machine, how few perceive 
The master-springs that guide it as its soul ; 
The wires that move the figures, and still weave 
The fate of man, “ from Indus to the Pole ;” 
And generate whatever comes to pass, 
Like spirit acting on some inert mass. 
That mass alone we see—But hold—my theme 
Will bear me far into the deep abyss 
Of that immortal science, or strange dream, 
Call’d “ Politics ??—nay, deeper still than this, 
To mighty nature’s universal scheme, 
Where human minds the way can only miss, 
Bewildered, lost, and into chaos wrought, 
E’en by the very vastness of their thought ! 
Back then to Punchinello. There the rake 
Gazes, scarce conscious that his all is spent, 
All vanished in the last, the fatal stake— 
And there th’ usurious Jew, with brow unbent, 
Stands and forgets what joy it is to take 
From sprigs of fashion his sixteen per cent. 5 
While e’en the debtor, who from bailiff flies, 
Casts back on Punch his oft-reverted eyes. 
[ Serr. 
