I. That a Bully is always a Coward -Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions II. That Ill-gotten Gain never Prospers. III. That a Man must not Laugh at his own Jest they will not Bear a Translation IX. That the Worst Puns are the Best XIII. That You must Love Me, and Love my Dog XIV. That We should Rise with the Lark. On Some of the Old Actors (London Magazine, Feb., 1822) From a Drawing by Daniel Maclise, now preserved in the Victoria and RE ELIA (From the 1st Edition, 1823) THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE EADER, in thy passage from the Bank-where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself)— to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly,--didst thou never observe a melancholy looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left-where Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a.grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out -a desolation something like Balclutha's.1 This was once a house of trade,—a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here—the quick pulse of gain-and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticos; imposing staircases; offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces-deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers -directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend,) at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands long since dry;-the oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty;-huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have 1I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate.-OSSIAN. |