212 THE RAT. 



firmly, that it did accompany the House of Hanover 

 in its emigration from Germany to England. Be 

 this as it may, it is certain that the stranger rat has 

 now punished us severely for more than a century 

 and a quarter. Its rapacity knows no bounds, while 

 its increase is prodigious beyond all belief. But the 

 most singular part of its history is, that it has 

 nearly worried every individual of the original rat 

 of Great Britain. So scarce have these last-men- 

 tioned apimals become, that in all my life I have 

 never seen but one single solitary specimen : it was 

 sent, some few years ago, to Nostell Priory, in a 

 cage, from Bristol; and I received an invitation 

 from Mr. Arthur Strickland, who was on a visit 

 there, to go and see it. Whilst I was looking at 

 the little native prisoner in its cage, I could not 

 help exclaiming, " Poor injured Briton ! hard, 

 indeed, has been the fate of thy family ! in another 

 generation, at farthest, it will probably sink down 

 to the dust for ever ! " 



Vain would be an attempt to trace the progress 

 of the stranger rat through England's wide domain, 

 as the old people now alive can tell nothing of 

 its coming amongst them. No part of the country 

 is free from its baneful presence : the fold and the 

 field, the street and the stable, the ground and the 

 garret, all bear undoubted testimony to its ubiquity 

 and to its forbidding habits. After dining on 

 carrion in the filthiest sink, it will often manage 

 to sup on the choicest dainties of the larder, where, 

 like Celseno of old, " vestigia foeda relinquit." We 

 may now consider it saddled upon us for ever. 



