1829.] The Lord Mayor's Bay. 495 



could with difficulty avert, in working out the results of the twelve 

 months just expired." 



But let those who dispassionately look at events, compare the progress 

 of our successes and our sufferings, with the progress of our religious 

 fidelity ; and turn, if they can, from the proof that the crime of apostacy 

 has always been visited by the penalty of political misfortune. It is folly and 

 babbling to talk of those things as mere coincidences. They have gone 

 on, side by side, from the beginning of the era of Protestantism in Eng- 

 land. Every act of religious tergiversation was punished by some direct 

 instance of temporal suffering ; and that, too, so unexpected and stem, 

 that it not less excited the astonishment than the alarm of the nation. 

 But, be the doubt what it will, the fact is plain — the year that has seen 

 England guiltily descend from her Protestant supremacy, has seen her 

 stricken down from her European throne ! 



THE LORD mayor's DAY. 



" Spirit op Momus ! thou'rt wandering wide, \ 



When I would thou wert merrily perched by my side) 



For I'm sorely beset by the blues : 

 Thou fugitive elf! I adjure thee, return ! 

 By Fielding's best wig, and the ashes of Stenie, 



Appear at the call of my muse !" 



It comes, with a laugh on its rubicund face ; 

 Methinks, by the way, it's in pretty good case. 



For a spirit unblest with a body : 

 " On the claret bee's-wing," says the sprite, " I regale ; 

 But I'm ready for all — from Lafitte down to ale — 



From Champagne to a tumbler of toddy. 



Then I'm not over-nice, as at least you must know. 

 In the rank of my hosts — for the lofty or low 



Are alike to the Spirit of Mirth : 

 I care not a straw with whom I have dined. 

 Though a family dhnier's not much to my mind. 



And a proser's a plague upon earth." 



" But where, my dear sprite, for this age have you been ? 

 Have you plunged in the Danube, or danced on the Seine } 



Or have taken in Lisbon your station .•* 

 Or have flapped over Windsor your butterfly-wings. 

 O'er its bevy of beauties, and courtiers, and kings — 



The wonders and wits of the nation }" 



" No ; of all climes for folly. Old England's the clime ; 

 Of all times for folly, the present's the time ; 



And my game is so plentiful here, 

 'J'hat all months are the same, from December to May ; 

 I can bag in a iniiuite enough for a day — 



In a day, bag enough for a year. 



My game-bag has nooks for ' Notes, Sketches, and Journeys,' 

 By soldiers and sailors, divines and attorneys. 



