Deals him out money from the public chest ;
Or, if that mine be shut, some private purse
Supplies his need with a usurious loan,
To be refunded duly, when his vote,
Well-manag'd, shall have earn’d its worthy price. 800
Oh innocent, compar'd with arts like these,
Crape, and cock’u pistcl, and the whistling ball
Sent through the traveller's temples! He that finds
One drop of heaven's sweet inercy in his cup,
Can dig, beg, rot, and perish, well content,

805
So he nay wrap himself in honest rags,
At his last gasp; but could not for a world
Fish up his dirty, and dependent bread
From pools and ditches of the commonwealth,
Sordid, and sickening at his own success.

810 Ambition, avarice, penury incurr'd By endless riot, vanity, the lust Of pleasure and variety, dispatch, As duly as the swallows disappear, The world of wandering knights and squires to town. 815 London ingulphs them all! The shark is there, And the shark's prey ; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he Who, with bare.headed and obsequious bows, Begs a warm office, doom’d to a cold jail And groat per dieni, if his patron frown, The levee swarms, as if, in golden pomp, Were character'd on every statesman's door, « BATTER'D AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED HERE." These are the charms that sully and eclipse

825 The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe That lean, hard-handed poverty, inflicts, The hope of better things, the chance to win, The wish to shine, the thirst to be amus'd, That, at the sound of winter's hoary wing,

830 Unpeople all our counties of such herds Of Huttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.:

835

Oh thou resort and mart of all the earth, Chequer'd with all complexions of mankind, And spottel with all crimes ; in whom I see Much that I love, and more than I admire, And all that I abhor ; thou freckled fair,

840

That pleases and yet shocks me, I can laugh
And I can weep, can hope, and can despond,
Feel wrath and pity, when I think on thee !
Ten righteous would have sav'd a city once,
And thou hast many righteous.-Well for thee
That salt preserves thee; more corrupted else,
And therefore more obnoxious, at this hour
Than Sodom in her day had power to be,
For whom God heard bis Abr'am plead in vain.

ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

The post comes in.-- The news-paper is read..

The world contemplated at a distance.--- Address to Winter. The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.Address to evening.-- A brown study.--Fall of snow in the evening.-The waggoner.-A poor family-piece. –The rural thief.--Public houses.

The multitude of them censured. The farm. er's daughter : what she was-what she is.The simplicity of country manners almost lost

. -Causes of the change.--Desertion of the country by the rich.-

Neglect of magistrates. - The militia principally in fault.- The nerv recruit and his transformation.-Reflection on bodies corporate. The love of rural objects natural to all

, and never to be totally extinguished.

BOOK IV.

THE WINTER EVENING.

HARK! 'tis the twanging horn! o'er yonder bridge,

5

10

15

That,

with its wearisome but needful length,
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright ;-
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With atter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks ;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
True to his charge, the close-pack'd load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destin'd inn ;
And, having dropp'd the expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,
Cold and yet cheerful : messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some ;
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,
Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet
With tears, that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
Or charg'd with amorous sighs of absent swains,
Or nymphs reponsive, equally affe&t
His horse and him, unconscious of them all.
But oh the important budget! usher'd in
With such heart-shaking music, who can say
What are its tidings ! have our troops awak'd ?
Or do they still, as if with opium drugg'd,
Snore to the murmurs of the atlantic wave ?
Is India free? and does she wear her plum'd
And jeweld turban with a smile of peace,
Or do we grind her still? The grand debate,