1829.] , Sleep. 397 



Undid the chains that bound the prostrate world. 



And gathered the fai nations round thy throne. 



To gaze with trembling on thy fearful guilt. 



Wise in thy youth, why didst thou wander forth. 



Struck with mad blindness in thy tott'ring age, 



Tearing the fast-fixed Lares from thy hearth. 



To seek new homes upon a hostile shore, 



And 'mid barbarians, in a foreign grave. 



Hide the dishonoured Majesty of Rome ; 



Pitiless in thy strength, thy feeble cries 



Found no compassion. Time brings retribution. 



When prostrate Carthage clasped thy knees in vain. 



Suing for mercy, little didst thou dream 



Of fatal Alaricj and his bitter taunt. 



Oh Nemesis ! thou art both wise and just. 



— A sullen shade draws near to Catiline, 



A hoary giant ; matted and uncombed. 



His hair and shaggy beard entwine together. 



Like the wreathed snakes of the Eumenides ; 



Gaunt misery, and guilt, and fiery rage. 



Have ploughed deep furrows in his ghastly face. 



Why are his ominous looks fixed on the ground 



Like one who ponders vengeance ? Speak his name. 



— Bow down thy head, and let me whisper it. 



Thou seest Marius — with the self-same look 



He stood upon the hill Janiculum, 



His haggard eye fixed on unhappy Rome, 



Like the grim tiger's ere his fatal spring. 



* « * * • 



J. R. O. 



AND THE LIBEKTY OF THE PRESS. 



" God send me never to live under the law of Convenience or Discretion! Sliall llie Soldier and Justice 

 sit on one bench ? Non bene conveniunt." 



Speech of Sir Edward Coke to the House of Commons,1628. 



We are no alarmists. We profess to have none of those superstitious 

 terrors clinging to us, which are apt to magnify very ordinary matters 

 into very extraordinary omens. We think it extremely possible that the 

 affairs of the best-regulated state of which history has left us any record, 

 or modern times afford us any example, may be exposed to occasional 

 obliquities, that do not necessarily involve, as their consequences, griev- 

 ances which only a revolution and a civil war can remedy. We believe < 

 grumbling to be, if not a cure, at least a palliative, for many disorders i"; 

 in the body politic ; and that it is commendable wisdom in a nation to 

 shrug its shoulders and shake its head sometimes at sundry disagreeable" 

 things, rather than turn restive, and swear it will not put up with them. 

 In short, we have seen enough of the world to know tliat change is not 

 always improvement, and that it is better to jog along good-humouredly, 

 taking the sweet with the sour in the best proportions of each we can 

 manage, than to fret, and fume, and quarrel at every step. Having said 

 thus much, we have a right to expect, in what we are about to say 

 further, that we shall not be classed with tliose atrabilious politicians 

 ' — those ornvium malorum nequissimi — who are for reversing the poet's 

 maxim, by systematically contending tliat " whatever is, is wrong." 



