Corn question. It has been maliciously asserted that, like Lablache when giving tongue in the Puritani, he has an eye to the Royal Box. But we have his own authority to state, that so long as the lovely proprietress of the best-turned out equipage in town remains contented, her ladyship may reckon upon his faithful service as her BODY-COACH

MAN.

THE STAGE-COACHMAN'S LAMENT.
FAREWELL to my tight little cutch!
Farewell to my neat four-inside!
Like a shabby old crack'd rabbit-hutch
They have treated the pet of my pride.
How she stood on her rollers so clean!
How she scuttled along like a doe,
Or a bowl on a close-shaven green!
Ah! warn't she a rum 'un to go!
But now all her claims are forgot,

And they've pull'd out her in'ards so soft,
And they 've laid up her carcass to rot
In a hole of a cutch-maker's loft.
Farewell to my four iron greys,

And the rest of the prads that I drive!
In these selfish and steam-sniffing days,
'Tisn't fit for good hosses to live.
Your prime fast machiners in lots
To the hammer are shamefully led :
'Twere better, like so many stots,

To knock 'em at once on the head.
My face from such deeds turns awry-
Not so with your change-hunting swarm:
Here's times for the knackers, says I;
'Tis the spirit, says they, of reform.
Some pretended to pity my case,

And they told me, the governor chaps,
I might have in the railway a place,
To look arter the luggage and traps.
But I bowed, and I grabbed up my hat,
And shied off, as though stung by a bee;
Only think of an offer like that

To a slap-up swell dragsman like me!
Old notions now look like a dream,
By vapour and iron deranged:
The breath of the hoss yields to steam,
And mettle for metal is changed!

But railways, so taking while new,
Can't come in the end to good speed:

If running in freedom won't do,
Can running in irons succeed?

How this levelling system is spread !
All as I ever met with it flogs.

People's heads hardly stand where they did,
And consistency 's gone to the dogs.

Why prate of the 'gineral weal,'

When our cutches are shoved by forlorn?

Why chaff about corn-law repeal,

When the hosses no more can eat corn!

'Tis your gallopin' politics makes

All the world for to hurry so fast,
To do all in a couple of shakes,

And improve, move, live, die, all in haste.

A plague on them leaders, the Whigs!
I'm a given to think very much

That in runnin' their rascally rigs,

They 'll upset by and by the state-cutch.

EXCURSIONS AT HOME AND ABROAD.

ENGLISHMEN, it may be safely said, are the most restless people on the face of the earth. The French are more mercurial, and the Americans have more of the 'go-ahead' principle of business about them; but in his love of locomotion, in his ardent fancy for foreign travel, in his insatiable curiosity to explore strange and unfrequented districts, John Bull beats them both hollow. His fat, round, honest face gleams, like a full moon, in every quarter of the civilized and uncivilized globe. The Indian of the North Pole, and the Negro within two days' journey of Timbuctoo, are alike familiar with it; it is seen, corrugated with spleen, or expanding into a broad grin, beneath the tents of the wandering Arab, among the ruins of Palmyra or Babylon, the snows of Siberia, the wind-swept flats of Australia,-wherever, in short, it is possible to sustain life, no matter at what cost, or amid what privations, there is, or has been, or will shortly be, that most vagabondizing of animals-John Bull! Strange bundle of paradoxes is this same John! He tells you he is never so thoroughly happy as when at home, and yet -like Lemuel Gulliver or Robinson Crusoe-he is never so happy as when he has turned his back upon that home. He holds it as the main article of his social creed that no country equals his own; yet there are few countries with whose great natural beauties he is so little acquainted. He professes to be an idolater of comfort, yet he courts the horrors of a polar winter or a tropical summer; and boasts of his habits of cleanliness, while for days and weeks together he is hail fellow, well met,' with the vermin of some Russian or Turkish dormitory.

If the volumes in which John Bull has recorded his myriad peregrinations since the general peace in 1815 could be collected, they would fill the shelves of a larger library than is possessed by any Mechanic's Institute in the three kingdoms. Scarce a month has elapsed during the publishing season for the last twenty-five years but the press has teemed with Voyages and Travels-north, south, east, and west-which attests, if not the sagacity, at least the restless and enterprising character of Englishmen. How many dozen volumes on Russia only have we not seen advertised within the last twelve months! With how many descriptions of Circassia, and the wild tracts bordering on the Caspian, are we not acquainted! Who is not as familiar with the leading features of Constantinople as with those of London or Edinburgh! But four short years since, Affghanistan and the passes of the Himalayas were, comparatively speaking, untrodden ground; now, Englishmen traverse them by the score, and treat as the merest common-places the startling adventures, that half a century ago would have set their ances tors wondering through a life-time. In the year 1830, a new volcanic island suddenly started up in the Mediterranean. Hardly had its nose

appeared above water, than off went John Bull to take a peep at it, and, as a matter of course, was the very first person to ascend its highest eminence. It has since vanished; but such was honest John's fidgetty curiosity to know what had become of it, that on the spot where it had once stood he actually went down in a diving-bell, slipping over the side of a merchant-ship! In one of his most amusing works, Washington Irving relates that he came in contact at Terracina with an English alderman and his family, who were just packing up for a tour to the Holy Land; another author has assured us that he saw Buy Warren's Blacking' chalked up in round text on the walls of the Temple of Theseus at Athens; and we all know that a Long-Acre-built omnibus, licensed to carry twelve, exclusive of its London cad, runs daily between the Pyræus and the Acropolis, and is chiefly patronised by English travellers! But not only is John Bull, like Ulysses, a wanderer over seas and lands, but the very skies come in for a share of his attention. It was but the other day that he took a balloon trip to Germany; and we do not despair of living to see the day when, acting on a recent astronomical theory, that the moon is inhabited, he will pop a clean shirt or two in his carpet-bag, and set forth on an expedition of discovery to that mysterious planet!

Though a love of enterprise is of course the chief incentive to these eccentric, adventurous movements of John Bull, yet fashion-to which he is proverbially a slave-has, we suspect, no slight share in prompting them; for, strange to say, particular countries come into and go out of fashion, just like dresses, wines, novels, drawing-room ballads, &c. During the run of the Scotch tales, the Highlands were all the rage, and awful was the rush of Englishmen across the border; some years later, Cooper's romances brought the American prairies into note, and off started John Bull to bivouac with the Pawnee Indians; Byron's Childe Harold sent him voyaging up the Rhine, and tearing across the plains of Troy; the late Russian campaigns precipitated him on the coast of Circassia; Captain Head's 'Bubbles from the Brunens' inoculated him with a German spa influenza; and now, nothing excites his fancy so much as the idea of paying a visit to Acre, and exposing himself to the scorching heats of the Syrian desert!

These Excursions Abroad' are all well enough in their way; but commend us-who are domestic, and less adventurous in our tastes, and wholly unswayed by fashion-commend us, we say, to the soberer enjoyment derived from Excursions at Home.' A ramble through our own country, or some of the sylvan provinces of France, is quite enough to satisfy our moderate ambition and curiosity. Wherever we go, we like to bear about with us a snug, social impression of home. We are anxious to be within call, in case of unforeseen accidents at headquarters. A letter informing us that our wife was given over by the physicians, or that our banker's name had just appeared in the Gazette, that should find us at Constantinople or Damascus, would occasion us inexpressible remorse. Besides, as we travel, like Dr. Syntax, solely in search of the picturesque, and have no faith in the scenic attractions of distant countries, merely because they are distant, we feel persuaded that we need never quit the shores of Britain: or if we do quit them, that the western and southern districts of 'La Belle France' will fulfil our most sanguine expectations. To say nothing of the mountain magnificence of the Highland regions; the sylvan luxuriance of the midland counties; the teeming variety of the West; and the savage grandeur of

the Welsh alps, with their hushed, secluded valleys carpeted with softest grasses, alive with the music of merry, tumbling brooklets, and fragrant with perfumed wild herbs;-to say nothing of these picturesque localities, what think you, gentle reader, of the neglected banks of the Thames, which from Fulham to Oxford-a distance of upwards of sixty miles-exhibit every species of landscape that can delight the eye of taste? Flowing through stately, park-like grounds, and emerald-green meadows at Richmond, whose cheerful slopes and lawns have been immortalized by the poetry of Thompson, and the prose of Scott; spreading out into a clear, expansive lake at Henley; sweeping proudly past the royal towers of Windsor, the terraced steeps of Clifden, and the precipitous chalk-cliffs of Caversham; murmuring sweet music among the ruins of Reading Abbey; and reflecting as in a bright, unsullied mirror, the classic beauties of Oxford; this noble river displays throughout its course scenes of such Arcadian attraction as might have inspired the pastoral pen of a Theocritus, or the picturesque pencil of a Claude. Do we exaggerate in speaking thus ? Let those who think we do, turn to Mr. Mackay's entertaining work The Thames and its Tributaries,' and acknowledge the justice of our eulogiums. Here, for instance, is his sketch of this glorious stream at Richmond-a locality that has already been described a hundred times, but which may be described as many more without palling upon the reader's taste.

6

'The first time we ever ascended the hill, the landscape was illumined by the rays of a bright noon-tide sun, and the waters of the Thames, stretching out right before us, were illumined with a long streak of light, and the far forests gleamed in the radiancy as their boughs were waved to and fro by a strong, but pleasant, south-west wind. Distant Windsor was visible; and hundreds of neat villas, and other pleasing objects, gratified the eye, to whichever side it turned; the Thames freshening and enlivening the whole. As we stood, the sky became overcast; dark clouds arose upon the horizon; the wind blew colder than its wont; while a few large drops of rain gave notice of an impending storm. The Terrace was soon bare of its visitors: all sought shelter from the rain; but we remained to watch the tempest, and the changes it wrought upon the landscape. It was glorious to see how the trees waved, like fields of corn, as the storm blew over them, and the smart showers whirled around; now hiding one spot by the thickness of the rain, and now wheeling past another, and obscuring it in like manner. The distant heights were no longer visible, and we could just see the Thames winding at the foot of the hill, and curling itself into tiny waves under the breath of the storm. The blossoms of the wild chestnut trees fell thick around us, diffusing a more delicious fragrance through the air; and the very dust of the ground seemed odorous as the moisture fell upon it. Suddenly there was a flash right over Windsor Castle, and all its towers were perceptible for an instant, and then hidden again. Successive flashes illumined other spots; and while the rain was piercing through our garments, we had no other thought than a strong desire to become an artist by the inspiration of the moment, and at one touch of our pencil to fasten upon enduring canvass a faithful representation of the scene.'

But Richmond, it may be said, is an exception to the general character of the Thames scenery; turn we then to Mr. Mackay's description of the view from the terrace of Windsor Castle.

'To the right of us lies Runnymead, still more renowned in the history of British freedom; beyond it. Cooper's Hill, sacred to the memory of Denham, and around it Windsor Forest, of which Pope has so sweetly sung. and where he passed his earliest years. And among all rise villas and noble mansions, thickly spread like stars on a frosty night.

"The view is universally admired, not only for its associations, but for itself. The beautiful diversity of hill and dale, of wood and water, of meadow and grove, of town and village, teeming with all the picturesque land-marks of civilisation, and with these only, unobscured by the tall chimneys of gas-works, and unspoiled in its pleasant ruralness by those huge square deformities, the manufactories, with which civilisation is compelled to sprinkle its path, renders it a scene of loveliness, unsurpassed in England.'

But, should a home excursion along the banks of the Thames be deemed too monotonous and insipid, the traveller has merely to cross over into France, to have all his ideas of the sublime and beautiful in scenery fully realized. Let him pursue the course of the Loire through the sylvan districts of the Bocage, and we will answer for it that he will be just as much delighted as with a steam-voyage up the Rhine, a ramble among the American prairies, or a sail through the Bosphorus into the Euxine Sea. Ruined abbeys, and castles of the most imposing appearance; rural villages embosomed in spreading forests, on whose verdant glades the sun lies, like a smile from Heaven; frowning rocks, cheerful dells, flower-enamelled meadows; everything, in short, that is requisite to perfect scenery, may be found along the banks, or in the immediate neighbourhood, of the Loire. We assert this without fear of contradiction; first, from the information received from travellers who have visited the localities, and who have assured us that in their search of the picturesque they have often gone further and fared worse; and, secondly, from an attentive perusal of Miss Costello's Summer among the Bocages and the Vines,'-one of the most delightful works of the sort with which we are acquainted. Observe the enthusiastic terms in which this lady speaks of the ruins of an abbey in the vicinity of the Loire, and the landscape immediately contiguous to them:

Of this once magnificent abbey the effect of the few remaining walls and windows is very fine. They appear from many points of view along the beautiful shores of the Rance, and form exquisite objects from the surrounding hills. Everywhere they are subjects for the painter; and artists are frequently met with, seated in the most attractive spots, busily engaged in transferring the magnificent scenery to their sketch books. The exquisite bits discoverable at each turn might seduce an amateur of the sublime and beautiful to linger all day on this delicious shore, before him the ruins, amidst the most graceful and varied foliage, the gardens and meadows reaching to the water's brink, the bridge, with its back-ground of moun tains in the distance, the little sails gliding along, the small islands, the gigantic hills clothed with wood, from whence are seen from distance to distance the ivy-crowned turrets of the castle of Beaumanoir; the huge blocks of grey granite scattered along the way, and the winding stream at their feet, with emerald grass and waving reeds close to the margin: -all this may well seduce a painter, or a wanderer, to spend all the shining summer day leaning on the short turf between the rocks, under the shelter of the groves at Lehon, as we did, and, regardless of fatigue, to climb the steep hill which, almost perpendicular, is cut into paths that serpentine sufficiently to suffer the passage, not only of the peasants, but of the dwellers who inhabit a charming villa, placed exactly on the peak of this elevation. It need hardly be said that these adventurous mountaineers are English, and delightfully they are repaid for the trouble of mounting so high.'

Again, read this description of the caves of Chinon, and tell us, you who have wandered over Europe, or among the woods, and valleys, and mountains of the New World, whether you have ever met with a