THE RAT. 211 
hemp, there arrived on the coast of England a ship 
from Germany, freighted with a cargo of no ordi- 
nary importance. In it was a sovereign remedy for 
all manner of national grievances. Royal expen- 
diture was to be mere moonshine, taxation as light 
as Camilla’s footsteps, and the soul of man was to 
fly up to heaven its own way. But the poet says, 
‘‘ dicique beatus 
Ante obitum nemo, supremaque funera debet ;” 
that is, we must not expect supreme happiness on 
our side of the grave. As a counterpoise to the 
promised felicity to be derived from this super- 
excellent German cargo, there was introduced, 
either by accident or by design, an article destined, 
_at no far distant period, to put the sons of Mr. Bull 
in mind of the verses which I have just quoted. 
This was no other than a little grey-coloured 
short-legged animal, too insignificant, at the time 
that the cargo was landed, to attract the slightest 
notice. It is known to naturalists, sometimes by 
the name of the Norwegian, sometimes by that of 
the Hanoverian, rat. Though I am not aware that 
there are any minutes, in the zoological archives 
of this country, which point out to us the precise 
time at which this insatiate and mischievous little 
brute first appeared among us; still, there is a 
tradition current in this part of the country, that 
it actually came over in the same ship which con- 
veyed the new dynasty to these shores. My father, 
who was of the first order of field naturalists, was 
always positive on this point; and he maintained 
P 2 
