272 
THE RAVEN. 
old stumbling mare to the ground. Her every egg 
was smashed to atoms; and whilst she lay sprawling 
on the ruins of her oological speculation^ she was 
perfectly convinced, in her own mind, that the raven 
had clearly foreseen her irreparable misadventure. 
Our royal sovereign, good King Arthur of ancient 
days, was known to have passed into the body of 
a raven. Cervantes tells us of a tradition, current 
through the whole of Great Britain, that this much- 
beloved monarch was changed into a raven by the 
art of witchcraft ; and that, in the due course of 
time, he would be again in possession of his crown 
and sceptre. I don't care how soon. Cervantes 
adds, that from the day on which the change took 
place, no Englishman has ever been known to kill a 
raven, and that the whole British nation is momently 
expecting its king's return. I should like to see 
King Arthur's face, when his loving subjects tell 
him of our national debt, and show him the civil 
list. Methinks his long-lost Majesty will groan in 
spirit, when he learns that the first was a present 
from Dutch William, and the second a donation to 
the country by the cormorant-traitors who had 
driven away our last Catholic king, because he had 
proclaimed universal liberty of conscience, and had 
begun to question their right to the stolen property. 
The ancients were of opinion that the raven lived 
to an extreme old age. I do not exactly see how 
the longevity can be proved, whilst the bird roves 
at liberty from place to place, far beyond the reach 
of man ; and, indeed the difficulty of proof is no- 
ways diminished when the raven is brought up tame 
