Of such a character no single trace
Exists, I know, in my fictitious face.
There wants a certain cast about the eye;
A certain lifting of the nose's tip;
A certain curling of the nether lip,

In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky;
In brief, it is an aspect deleterious,
A face decidedly not serious,

A face profane, that would not do at all

To make a face at Exeter Hall,

That Hall where bigots rant and cant and pray,
And laud each other face to face,
Till every farthing-candle ray
Conceives itself a great gaslight of grace!

Well! be the graceless lineaments confest!
I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth;
And dote upon a jest

"Within the limits of becoming mirth ";
No solemn sanctimonious face I pull,
Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious,
Nor study in my sanctum supercilious
To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.
I pray for grace, repent each sinful act,
Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible;
And love my neighbor far too well, in fact,
To call and twit him with a godly tract
That's turned by application to a libel.
My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven,
All creeds I view with toleration thorough.
And have a horror of regarding heaven
As anybody's rotten borough.

That must be lashed by law, wherever found,
And driven to church as to the parish pound.
I do confess, without reserve or wheedle,

I view that grovelling idea as one
Worthy some parish clerk's ambitious son,
A charity-boy who longs to be a beadle.
On such a vital topic sure 't is odd

How much a man can differ from his neighbor;
One wishes worship freely given to God,
Another wants to make it statute-labor,
The broad distinction in a line to draw,
As means to lead us to the skies above,
You say,
Sir Andrew and his love of law,
And I, the Saviour with his law of love.

-

Spontaneously to God should tend the soul,
Like the magnetic needle to the Pole;

But what were that intrinsic virtue worth, Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowl. edge

Fresh from St. Andrew's college,

Should nail the conscious needle to the north?

I do confess that I abhor and shrink
From schemes, with a religious willy-nilly,
That frown upon St. Giles's sins, but blink
The peccadilloes of all Piccadilly, -
My soul revolts at such bare hypocrisy,
And will not, dare not, fancy in accord
The Lord of Hosts with an exclusive lord
Of this world's aristocracy.

It will not own a notion so unholy
As thinking that the rich by easy trips
May go to heaven, whereas the poor and lowly
Must work their passage, as they do in ships.

One place there is, - beneath the burial-sod,
Where all mankind are equalized by death;
Another place there is, the fane of God,
Where all are equal who draw living breath;
Juggle who will elsewhere with his own soul,
Playing the Judas with a temporal dole,
He who can come beneath that awful cope,
In the dread presence of a Maker just,
Who metes to every pinch of human dust
One even measure of immortal hope,
He who can stand within that holy door,
With soul unbowed by that pure spirit-level,
And frame unequal laws for rich and poor,
Might sit for Hell, and represent the Devil!

The humble records of my life to search,

I have not herded with mere pagan beasts;
But sometimes I have "sat at good men's feasts,"
And I have been "where bells have knolled to
church."

Dear bells! how sweet the sounds of village bells
When on the undulating air they swim!
Now loud as welcomes! faint, now, as farewells!

And trembling all about the breezy dells,
As fluttered by the wings of cherubim.
Meanwhile the bees are chanting a low hymn;
And, lost to sight, the ecstatic lark above
Sings, like a soul beatified, of love,

With, now and then, the coo of the wild pigeon;-
O pagans, heathens, infidels, and doubters!
If such sweet sounds can't woo you to religion,
Will the harsh voices of church cads and touters?
A man may cry Church! Church! at every word,
With no more piety than other people,
A daw's not reckoned a religious bird
Because it keeps a-cawing from a steeple ;
The Temple is a good, a holy place,
But quacking only gives it an ill savor,
While saintly mountebanks the porch disgrace,
And bring religion's self into disfavor!

I have not sought, 't is true, the Holy Land,
As full of texts as Cuddie Headrigg's mother,
The Bible in one hand,

And my own commonplace-book in the other;
But you have been to Palestine - alas!
Some minds improve by travel; others, rather,
Resemble copper wire or brass,
Which gets the narrower by going farther!

Worthless are all such pilgrimages- very!
If Palmers at the Holy Tomb contrive
The human heats and rancor to revive
That at the Sepulchre they ought to bury.
A sorry sight it is to rest the eye on,
To see a Christian creature graze at Sion,
Then homeward, of the saintly pasture full,
Rush bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke,
At crippled Papistry to butt and poke,
Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull
Hunts an old woman in a scarlet cloke.

Say, was it to my spirit's gain or loss,
One bright and balmy morning, as I went
From Liege's lovely environs to Ghent,
If hard by the wayside I found a cross,
That made me breathe a prayer upon the spot,
While Nature of herself, as if to trace
The emblem's use, had trailed around its base
The blue significant Forget-Me-Not?
Methought, the claims of Charity to urge
More forcibly along with Faith and Hope,
The pious choice had pitched upon the verge
Of a delicious slope,

But only on a formal visit dwells

Where wasps instead of bees have formed the comb.

Shun pride, O Rae !-whatever sort beside
You take in lieu, shun spiritual pride!
A pride there is of rank, -a pride of birth,
A pride of learning, and a pride of purs,
A London pride, in short, there be on earth
A host of prides, some better and some worse;
But of all prides, since Lucifer's attaint,
The proudest swell's a self-elected Saint.

To picture that cold pride so harsh and hard,
Fancy a peacock in a poultry-yard.
Behold him in conceited circles sail,
Strutting and dancing, and now planted stiff,
In all his pomp of pageantry, as if
He felt "the eyes of Europe on his tail!
As for the humble breed retained by man,
He scorns the whole domestic clan, -
He bows, he bridles,

He wheels, he sidles, As last, with stately dodgings in a corner, He pens a simple russet hen, to scorn her Full in the blaze of his resplendent fan!

"Look here," he cries, (to give him words,) "Thou feathered clay, thou scum of birds!". Flirting the rustling plumage in her eyes, "Look here, thou vile predestined sinner, Doomed to be roasted for a dinner, Behold these lovely variegated dyes! These are the rainbow colors of the skies, That heaven has shed upon me con amore, A Bird of Paradise ?- -a pretty story! I am that Saintly Fowl, thou paltry chick ! Look at my crown of glory!

Thou dingy, dirty, dabbled, draggled jill!"
And off goes Partlett, wriggling from a kick,
With bleeding scalp laid open by his bill!

That little simile exactly paints
How sinners are despised by saints.
By saints!

the Hypocrites that ope heaven's

door Obsequious to the sinful man of riches; But put the wicked, naked, barelegged poor In parish stocks, instead of breeches. Thrice blessed, rather, is the man with whom The gracious prodigality of nature, The balm, the bliss, the beauty, and the bloom, The bounteous providence in every feature, Recall the good Creator to his creature, Making all earth a fane, all heaven its dome !

Zetle cress' up quite undenarne

An' pecked on thon the winder

In' there Got Hulby all alone

with no one.

sigh to hender.

Such a paragon is woman That, you Led, it must be true

The is always eastly better

Thaw the best that the can do!