THE RAT. 
211 
on the coast of England a ship from Germany 
freighted with a cargo of no ordinary importance. 
In it was a sovereign remedy for all manner^of na- 
tional grievances. Royal expenditure was to be 
mere moonshine, taxation as light as Camilla's foot- 
steps, and the soul of man was to fly up to heaven 
its own way. But the poet says, 
" dicique beatus 
Ante obitum nemo, supremaque fun era 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 superexcelient Ger- 
man 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 conveyed 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 firmly, 
p 2 
