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 SCENES 
 
 FROM AN UNFINISHED DRAMA, 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 PHEONTISTEEION, 
 
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 OR, 
 
 OXFORD IN THE 19th CENTURY. 
 
 Kal 01 fxkv KriffToL avrohs iropicrras Ka\ov<n vvv' dib i^ecrri \eyeif rhv 
 aSiKTiaavra fi\v aiMaprdueiv, Thu S' aixaprdvovTa aZiKTiaaif Kol rhv KXe^aura 
 KoL Xa/Seti' koX vopOrjcrai. — AHstot. Rhet, III. 2, 
 
 Lucio. Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to 
 sea with the ten commandments, but scraped one out of the table. 
 
 2 Gent. Thou shalt not steal ? 
 
 Lucio. Ay, that he razed, 
 
 1 Gent. Why, 'twas a commandment to command the captain and all 
 the rest from their functions ; they put forth to steal. 
 
 Measure for Measure. I. 2. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 OXFORD : 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. VINCENT. 
 
 AND G. BELL, FLEET STREET, LONDON. 
 MDCCCLII.
 
 ^UIUC
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONJE. 
 
 Strepsiades-Cottonarchocalicocraticus, The Model Man- 
 chester Man. 
 
 Pheidippides-Johnny. The Model Minister^ a compound^ as 
 his mune implies^ of parsimony and chi^oalry^ a great public benefac- 
 tor, but prefers doing it at other peoples expense. 
 
 Secretary to the Commission. 
 
 Commissioner-Socrates. The Model Instructor of Yoicth. 
 
 Chorus of Cloudy Professors. 
 
 Just Discourse. A Bigot. 
 
 Unjust Discourse. A Liberal.
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 cottonarchocalicocraticus in bed, soliloquizing. 
 Johnny in truckle-bed, asleep. 
 
 Cot. Confound those heaven-sent Whigs ! there was a 
 time 
 Some twenty years ago, when cautious John 
 Upset his coach, and nearly lost his place for't. 
 Aye, those were glorious times. Reforms and riots. 
 Burning of ricks and Bristols. Honest Demus 
 For once was master, and my Lord was fain 
 To climb his box on Tom the Tinker's shoulders, 
 And drive a rattling pace for't. But once mounted, 
 He halts and hesitates, talks of Finality, 
 And drives so slow and steady, that his wheels 
 Scarce make a Revolution in a life-time. 
 Boy there, my bills ! let's see what we\e in store. 
 '^ Proposed by Richard Cobden, to distribute 
 The whole of Britain in electoral districts 
 Of equal area." — Why electoral districts ? 
 That men of movement, those who live in towns. 
 May swamp the country bumpkins, and promote 
 The march of intellect and sale of cotton.
 
 Then from the Peace Society, demanding 
 Protection for all cannibals and pirates, 
 Provided that their skins are black or tawny, 
 Fraternity with all Malays and Kaffirs, 
 And lasting infamy to him that wears 
 The base and bloodstained livery of a soldier. 
 Johnny (in his sleep). The Estimates. 
 Got. Sir Joseph Banks was right;* 
 
 Ten thousand Lobsters bite me from the ticking,^ — 
 Plague take the matchmaker who brought together 
 The fine Whig Lady, Aristocracy, 
 And honest Homespun from the cotton-mill. 
 A well-assorted couple ! — Madam, full 
 Of old historic memories, and prating 
 Of Sidney, Russell, William the Deliverer, 
 And Brunswick Line, and Protestant Succession ; 
 And plain, rough Hubby, thinking Monarchy 
 A rather costly article, and spouting 
 Of Household Suffrage, Ballot, and Retrenchment, 
 The fine old English Gentleman cut down 
 To a good travelling Gent., and martial scarlet 
 Doffed for the drab and broadbrim. — ^Well, we married. 
 In time my Lady longed, as women will 
 In interesting states, and when I hinted 
 Plain Manchester for pudding, she grew squeamish, 
 And fancied nothing but a Cabinet. 
 
 * The whimsical theory of this savant as to the identity of fleas and 
 lobsters will be familiar to the readers of Peter Pindar.
 
 It wouldn't do to cross her ; so she had it. 
 
 At last our John was born. Mamma's relations 
 
 Petted and coaxed him. " Some day we shall see 
 
 Our darling Johnny drive his coachy-poachy 
 
 With four blood Greys in front.'' Says I, " my lad, 
 
 I'd rather see you riding Dick our Cob, 
 
 Or arm-in-arm with worthy Quaker Broadbrim 
 
 And Joey Skinflint." Not a whit would he. 
 
 The great Whig Families (aye, that's the doctrine, 
 
 He sucked it with his mother's milk, and bit it 
 
 Letter by letter in his gingerbread) 
 
 Are heaven-sent ministers to rule the country. 
 
 I'll rouse him yet. Ho ! Johnny, Johnnikin ! 
 
 Brutus, thou sleep'st ; thou art no longer Brutus. 
 
 Johnny (still sleeping) 
 Join the adjacent district to the borough. 
 And give two members. 
 
 Cot. That's his boroughmongering ! 
 
 Tis strange, the greatest jobbers in creation 
 Are these same purity- Whigs. He dreams of jobbing ; 
 And if you whisper in his ear " Reform," 
 He snores, and starts, and turns, and snores again. 
 Letting / dare not wait upon I would, 
 Like the poor cat i' th' adage. What will rouse him ? 
 
 [Meditating. 
 I have it now ! The Universities. 
 Long as those monkish rookeries exist 
 They'll be a drag upon us go-a-head men :
 
 8 
 
 At least with Church Establishment. Abroad 
 
 They manage those things differently : the Burschen 
 
 Fight at the barricades ; and Herr Professor 
 
 Will sketch you twenty Paper-Constitutions 
 
 Shall only cost the foolscap. No subscribing 
 
 To Articles, no tests of Church Communion ; 
 
 But good Free Trade, religious and political, 
 
 Progress and Agitation. But at Oxford 
 
 There's nought but bigotry and priestcraft. Tell them 
 
 Of Institutions free to all religions, 
 
 Where Jew, Turk^ Infidel and Heretic 
 
 May sit like brothers, studying modern science : 
 
 They say the experiment's too dangerous 
 
 For old, time-honoured bulwarks of the Church, 
 
 And bid us try Stinkomalee. The bigots ! 
 
 1^11 tame their pride and open all their ports. 
 
 Ill have a Meeting, nay, a Synagogue. 
 
 The pompous Pharisee shall walk their streets 
 
 With broad phylacteries and Rabbi, Rabbi. 
 
 Why not ? as well as stand with bated breath 
 
 And lifted cap, saluting Heads and Proctors 
 
 Johnny, wake up, boy. 
 
 I 
 
 John. What's the matter, governor 
 
 Cot. Johnny, my precious, do you love Papa ? 
 John. Aye, when Mamma will let me. 
 Cot. Never mind her. 
 
 (Aside) She's troublesome at times, spends lots of 
 money,
 
 Gives herself airs, is fond of patronizing 
 
 Her high-bred kinsmen, asks them to my house, 
 
 Finds them in bed and board, and all the while 
 
 I know the puppies laugh behind my back. 
 
 But still 'tis something to be hand and glove 
 
 With men who wear clean shirts and know good 
 
 manners : 
 I can't afford to quarrel. {Aloud) No, my boy. 
 Mamma won't meddle here, 'tis no great matter : 
 Only to rap a few proud parsons' knuckles. 
 JoHX. That all ! I'm ready. Bishops ? Deans and 
 
 Chapters ? 
 Cot. No, not just yet. " Commission to examine 
 The discipline, state, studies, and revenues 
 Of Oxford and of Cambridge." 
 
 Johnny. {Musing) The revenues. 
 
 How strange, I never thought of that before. 
 They're influential bodies. Can I venture ? 
 So short a notice. Shall I ? Courage, Johnny ! 
 {Aloud) Tis done. Five minutes time is all I ask 
 To execute my patriotic task. 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 FRONT OF THE ROOM IX DOWNING STREET. JOHNNY 
 ENTERS AND KNOCKS. THE SECRETARY OF THE COMMIS- 
 SION OPENS. 
 
 Sec For whom thus rudely pleads our loud-tongued 
 gate
 
 10 
 
 That he may enter ? 
 
 John. Tis the Premier, John. 
 
 Sec. Why did you knock so loud? You nearly 
 spoiled 
 The neatest, cleverest problem in Statistics. 
 Our Chief Commissioner was solving it 
 Just when you rapped. 
 
 John. What was it ? pray do tell me. 
 
 Sec. Our Chief Commissioner was calculating 
 How many College Fellowships would keep 
 The new Professors of the Board of Science. 
 
 John. A very knotty point. How did he solve it ? 
 
 Sec. Oh, in the cleverest way. He took himself, 
 A hypothetical case, of course, and sent 
 For all his last year's bills, summed up and reckoned. 
 " Add twice as much for Frau Professorinn, 
 Three times for olive-branches yet unborn, 
 A margin left for sundries, and another 
 For rainy days and failures of the scheme. 
 Eight hundred pounds will just suffice per annum." 
 
 John. Odds Dos and Dodges ! What a ready reckoner ! 
 But who's to pay the piper ? 
 
 Sec. That he settled 
 
 By a still cleverer plan. He made a schedule. 
 Picked out four Colleges, Magdalen and Corpus, 
 Merton and All Souls ; then he calculated : 
 " Six Fellowships of Corpus, six of Merton, 
 Twice six of Magdalen, four times six of AH Souls,
 
 11 
 
 Will make provision for fourteen Professors." 
 
 John. By Hermes, god of thieves, a shrewd device ! 
 And after that, can we admire our Founders, 
 Mere wasteful Donors, ignorant of Economy, 
 Private, political, and t'other kind 
 Which Newman used to join with (j)€vaKC(7fi6<;. 
 I never heard of money raised so well. 
 I long to be his pupil. Open quickly ! 
 Laverna I What a calculating face ! 
 
 Sec. That is the Chief himself. 
 
 John. And who those ladies ? 
 
 Sec. Physical Sciences. The first's Pneumatics. 
 
 John. What can she do ? 
 
 Sec. She teaches men of science 
 
 Clever contrivances to raise the mnd. 
 The next is Mensuration. She 's to measure 
 Incomes of Fellowships. 
 
 John. Which ? the Professors' ? 
 
 Sec. No, all the rest. Look at her map. That's All- 
 Souls. 
 H John. How thin and shrunk it looks. 
 
 Sec Tis just cut down. 
 
 From forty fellowships remain sixteen, 
 Deducting four and twenty for Professors. 
 
 John. Hermes ! that beats Vidocq. Commissioner I 
 
 Commissioner. Who calls so loud. 
 
 John. I, John the Minister. 
 
 Teach me, I beg, your mode of raising money.
 
 12 
 
 'Twill help our budget wondrously. That Wood 
 Is a mere stick at figures, and Joe Skinflint 
 Bothers us with his items and his tottles 
 Out of our very places. Can't you teach me 
 A good Exchequer trick ; you 11 find me apt, 
 A ready pupil. Will you be my tutor ? 
 
 Com. Tutor ! benighted wretch ! didst thou say Tutor? 
 Who talks of Tutors now ? The coin's not current. 
 Professors, man. Professors are the thing. 
 They '11 mould and model English education 
 On the best German plan : tis quite delightful 
 To see how German Students learn of them. 
 No bigotry, no narrow-minded feeling, 
 Nothing sectarian. In their very songs 
 They praise the Pope, who leads a jolly life, 
 And wish to be the Sultan. 
 
 John. Can I see them. 
 
 These wonderful Professors ? 
 
 Com. I'll invoke them. 
 
 Listen, august Professors, ye who teach 
 Physics with Oken, and proclaim to man 
 In the beginning how the heavens and earth 
 Rose from the eternal Nothing. Ye who scan 
 The Universe of Being, and reveal 
 How Werden, eldest born of Seyn and Nichts, 
 Gave birth to Daseyn, whence in long succession 
 The world of Thought and Substance. Ye who fathom 
 The hidden myths of Scripture and the essence
 
 13 
 
 Of Worship, Function of Psychology, — 
 I summon you, appear. 
 
 Enter Chorus of Professors. 
 Strophe or Twist. 
 
 Professors we, 
 
 From over the sea, 
 From the land where Professors in plenty be ; 
 And we thrive and flourish, as well we may, 
 In the land that produced one Kant with a K 
 
 And many Cants with a C. 
 Where Hegel taught, to his profit and fame, 
 That something and nothing were one and the same ; 
 The absolute difference never a jot being 
 Twixt having and not having, being and not being, 
 But wisely declined to extend his notion 
 To the finite relations of thalers and groschen. 
 Where, reared by Oken's plastic hands. 
 The " Eternal Nothing of Nature '' stands ; 
 And Theology sits on her throne of pride, 
 As " Arithmetic personified ;" 
 And the hodmandod crawls, in its shell confined, 
 A " symbol exalted of slumbering mind." 
 
 Bacon, be dumb, 
 
 Newton, be mum ; 
 The worth of induction's a snap of the thumb. 
 
 With a bug, bug, bug, and a hum, hum, hum,* 
 
 Hither the true Philosophers come. 
 
 * These emphatic monosyllables, Hke the K6y^ tfi-rra^ of the mysteries, 
 are supposed to have an esoteric meaning, known only to the initiated.
 
 14 
 
 Com. All hail, revered Professors. Didst thou note 
 The eloquence and wisdom of their strain ? 
 
 John. Faith, how I wish I had them in the House 
 To talk down Opposition. Do you think 
 They would take office I 
 
 Com. Hark, they sing again. 
 
 Antistrophe or Counter-twist. 
 
 Theologians we. 
 
 Deep thinkers and free, 
 From the land of the new Divinity ; 
 Where Critics hunt for the sense sublime. 
 Hidden in texts of the olden time, 
 
 Which none but the sage can see. 
 Where Strauss shall teach you how Martyrs died 
 For a moral idea personified, 
 A myth and a symbol, which vulgar sense 
 Received for historic evidence. 
 Where Bauer can prove that true Theology 
 Is special and general Anthropology, 
 And the essence of worship is only to find 
 The realized God in the human mind. 
 Where Feuerbach shews how Religion began 
 From the deified feelings and wants of man, 
 And the Deity owned by the mind reflective, 
 Is Human Consciousness made objective. 
 
 Presbyters, bend. 
 
 Bishops, attend ;
 
 15 
 
 The Bible's a myth from beginning to end. 
 
 With a bug, bug, bug, and a hum, hum, hum, 
 Hither the true Theologians come. 
 
 John. And is this really the new German light, 
 The true philosophy of every thing ? 
 
 Com. No, not of every thing : youVe only heard 
 The Exoteric Teaching, freely showered 
 Upon the vulgar ear. If thou wilt be 
 Our patron and disciple, thou shalt know 
 The Inner Doctrine. Thou shalt hear a strain 
 Such as Eleusis never heard of old 
 Amid the initiate : such as Egypt's priests 
 Ne'er sang at Sais' shrine, what time they worshipp'd 
 Isis, the symbol of the Unconditioned : 
 Such as ne'er rose when ^on Demiurgus 
 Was hymned in Gnostic Ecstacy ; nor when 
 Spinoza, the Acosmist, preached his God 
 The One and All, the Universal Substance. 
 
 Hymn to the Infinite by the full Chorus. 
 The voice of yore. 
 Which the breezes bore 
 Wailing aloud from Paxo's shore. 
 
 Is changed to a gladder and livelier strain. 
 
 For the great God Pan is alive again, 
 
 He lives and he reigns once more. 
 
 With deep intuition and mystic rite
 
 16 
 
 We worship the Absolute-Infinite, 
 The Universe-Ego, the Plenary- Void, 
 The Subject-Object identified, 
 The great Nothing-Something, the Being-Thought, 
 That mouldeth the mass of Chaotic Nought, 
 Whose beginning unended and end unbegun 
 the One that is All and the All that is One, 
 
 Hail Light with Darkness joined ! 
 
 Thou Potent Impotence ! 
 
 Thou Quantitative Point 
 
 Of all Indifference ! 
 Great Non-Existence, passing into Being, 
 Thou two-fold Pole of the Electric One, 
 Thou Lawless Law, thou Seer all Unseeing, 
 Thou Process, ever doing, never done ! 
 
 Thou Positive Negation ! 
 
 Negative Afiirmation ! 
 Thou great Totality of every thing 
 That never is, but ever doth become, 
 
 Thee do we sing. 
 
 The Pantheist's King, 
 With ceaseless bug, bug, bug, and endless hum, hum, hum. 
 
 Com. There was a strain, whose tones of dulcet 
 grandeur 
 Might rouse Inertness from her bed of down, 
 Might check the eager blood of Youth, when glows 
 The heyday of the passions, might bring down
 
 17 
 
 The pride of pompous Dons, and cliarm the ear 
 Of Academic millions, make Debauch 
 Cast off the sickening fames of midnight's revel. 
 And Carelessness grow convert to Attention. 
 Sublime Professors ! Did you understand it \ 
 
 I John. Not quite, I own. But can we have all this 
 Only for eight and forty fellowships ! 
 Com. All this, and more. 
 John. One little scruple pricks me. 
 
 The Colleges, I've heard reformers say, 
 
 Were private institutions, quite distinct 
 
 From the great public University. 
 
 Now, if one feature of your reformation 
 
 Is to restore the University 
 
 As independent, how will you defend 
 
 The endowing it from College property ? 
 
 Com. By one good reason. It will give the Crown 
 
 Twelve thousand pounds a-year of patronage 
 
 Raised out of College lands. 
 
 John. Fm satisfied.' 
 
 Com. ril make the thing still clearer. All your scruples 
 
 If you have any scruples left, will vanish. 
 
 Let it but please you hear our two Discourses. 
 
 The one's a Tory of the good old school. 
 
 Honest, but ignorant, bigoted, pig-headed, 
 
 A staunch Protectionist, a Church-and-State-man, 
 
 Living some fifty years on beef and beer, 
 
 And farming, as his father farmed before him.
 
 I 
 
 18 
 
 The other, a Stump-Orator from Manchester, 
 
 Quick-tongued and brazen-faced, a hustings-spouter, 
 
 A Demagogue, an out-and-out Free Trader, 
 
 Goes with the Spirit of the Age, and knows J 
 
 All branches of Political Economy. 
 
 We'll call them, if you please, the Just and Unjust, 
 
 Mere noms de guerre^ of course, for justice, really, 
 
 Is what the law commands, and what the law 
 
 Commands is what the people's wants require. 
 
 This time, I back the Unjust, and will bet | 
 
 My reputation as a sound reformer 
 
 Against the best Professorship when founded, 
 
 He beats his rival in the argument. 
 
 Then listen, while our disputants define 
 
 The nature, end, and laws of mine and thine. 
 
 SCENE III. 
 
 ENTER JUST DISCOURSE AND UNJUST DISCOURSE. 
 
 U. D. Where be they, the dreaming dotards, bigots 
 
 of the olden time. 
 Purblind patrons of abuses, champions of corruption's 
 
 slime. 
 Pudding-headed, narrow-minded, noddynoodledoodle- 
 
 nincom — 
 Poops, who doubt our right of dealing as we please 
 
 with college income I 
 J. D. Where be they, the shameless spoilers, violating 
 
 private right.
 
 19 
 
 Riding roughshod over justice, crushing equity with 
 
 might, 
 Turning from its proper channels wealth our fathers' 
 
 bounty left, 
 Sullying reform with rapine, public ends with private 
 theft? 
 U. D. Theft, my friend ! the gods have pity on your 
 weak and watery brain ! 
 How can they who own the total steal a portion ? pray 
 
 explain. 
 Men in nature's state are equal : property, conferred by 
 
 laws. 
 From the sanction of the people all its rights and safe- 
 guards draws. 
 You but hold it at their pleasure, you must yield it at 
 
 their summons : 
 And the pleasure of the people, seek it in the House of 
 Commons. 
 J. D. Have you then no higher standards, fixed ere 
 human laws began 
 By the voice of man's Creator, by the moral sense of man ? 
 Rules may alter, codes may perish, customs change, but 
 
 these abide, 
 Truths no practice can abolish, no enactment override. 
 Vain the fine-drawn web of sophisms, vain the brazen 
 
 mail of lies ; 
 Means condemned by God and Conscience, no expedience 
 justifies.
 
 20 
 
 U. D. Moral Sense ! a mere delusion : prejudice of 
 
 education ; 
 Amiable in individuals, childish weakness in a nation. 
 Pious scruples, tender conscience, doubtless suit a private 
 
 station ; 
 Public interest's the rule for all enlightened legislation. 
 So in debts : one''s private duty pleads, perhaps, for 
 
 liquidation : 
 In a free enlightened people, who shall blame repudiation ? 
 J. D. Yet bethink thee that the spirit whence those 
 
 princely bounties flowed 
 To the ties of private feeling all its force and being 
 
 owed. 
 Severed from the bonds of kindred, taught his lonely 
 
 heart to school 
 By his Father's chastening kindness or his Church's 
 
 sterner rule, 
 Oft to spots by memory cherished, where his earliest 
 
 love began. 
 In his age's desolation, fondly turned the childless man. 
 Then the quickening drops of kindness through the 
 
 drooping soul were felt 
 From the home his youth that nurtured, from the church 
 
 where first he knelt. 
 Then the long-neglected feelings claimed once more 
 
 their moving part, 
 And the pent-up tide of bounty forced its passage 
 
 through the heart.
 
 21 
 
 U. D. Stuff and nonsense ! why should feeling public 
 spirit clog and cumber, 
 When the greatest happiness is wanted for the greatest 
 
 number ? 
 Private ties, you can''t disprove it if you argue to 
 
 eternity, 
 Hamper in their narrow fetters Cosmopolitan Fraternity. 
 Close Foundations, limited to one particular locality, 
 Might as well be left to foster open vice and immorality : 
 I slwuld feel far more compunction, laying hands to 
 
 spoil and pillage 
 On the brothel of an empire than the college of a village. 
 J. D. Shameless Robber ! 
 U. D. Owl-eyed Bigot ! 
 
 J. D. Hear^stthou 
 
 Heaven, and sleeps thy thunder ? 
 Right Divine proclaimed for rapine. Laws invoked to 
 
 sanction plunder ! 
 Take a warning in thy triumph. Godless power is frail 
 
 to trust : 
 Sure the millstone of his vengeance ; late it grinds, but 
 
 grinds to dust. 
 Search the tale of fallen nations. Justice banished, rights 
 
 forgot. 
 History's record tells the sequel. Seek her place, and 
 she is not. 
 U. D. Worn out notions, musty fancies, redolent of 
 Church and King,
 
 22 
 
 Guardian- Angels, George-and-Dragons, that old-fashioned 
 
 sort of thing. 
 Master spirits, leading statesmen, all to circumstances 
 
 bow : 
 Public Conscience, State Religion, even Gladstone scouts 
 
 them now. 
 Tut, man, look to facts and figures : truce to all this 
 
 idle bustle : 
 Bluff King Hal is praised in Christchurch ; plundered 
 
 Woburn breeds a Russell. 
 Look at France's half-fledged eaglet, gazing with un- 
 
 dazzled eye 
 On the sunbeams of his glory, — and the Orleans 
 
 property. 
 Look at Prussia's champion-heroes, men in freedom's 
 
 tale immortal. 
 Chalking " national possession" on their tyrant's palace 
 
 portal. 
 Look at England's Church Commission, holy work by 
 
 Bishops blest, 
 Half your Chapters burked already; Blandford's bill 
 
 will do the rest. 
 If you bandy rights and duties, great reforms will ne'er 
 
 begin. 
 Give the cards a thorough shufile: cut again; first 
 knave to win. 
 J. D, 'Tis in vain, I see, to argue. Modern light 
 must have its way.
 
 23 
 
 Public morals sapped and rotted, knaves must even win 
 
 the day. 
 Fare thee well. Should after-ages bring to pass the 
 
 scene foretold, 
 When our future is a memory, and our days are days of 
 
 old. 
 When New Zealand's travelled native from some ruined 
 
 arch looks down 
 On old Thames's silent current, London's desolated town. 
 On the banks no groaning warehouse, on the stream 
 
 no flag unfurled, 
 Where the modern Carthage traded long ago with half 
 
 a world. 
 Then if History's bitter lesson wake the patriot's 
 
 anxious care, 
 Thus the warning voice may mingle in the accents 
 
 of his prayer. 
 Thou that hold'st the fate of nations in the scales of 
 
 Justice weighed. 
 Not alone 'gainst foreign armies ; 'gainst ourselves we 
 
 ask thy aid. 
 Never may my country's counsels traffic's sordid spirit 
 
 feel, 
 Selling birthrights, cheapening pottage, trading with 
 
 a nation's weal. 
 Never may a craven pilot at our vessel's helm preside, 
 Swayed by mob-tongued agitation, taking demagogues 
 
 for guide,
 
 24 
 
 Truckling to the voice of faction, listening for the 
 loudest cry, 
 
 Gauging pressures, measuring noises, what to grant 
 and what deny. 
 
 Never may the scoundrel maxims* of a money-mak- 
 ing band 
 
 Pawn the charter of our freedom, blight the sinews of 
 our land. 
 
 Thou whose gifts are might and wisdom, purge from 
 mists my country's eyes ; 
 
 Teach her in the hour of trial where alone her safety 
 lies ; 
 
 Bid her scorn the shout of faction, bid her spurn 
 the lust of pelf, j^ 
 
 Trusting still through good and evil in her God and 
 in herself. 
 
 And if ever public feeling, led by selfish tongues astray. 
 
 Gloat o'er traffic's heaped-up riches, smile when Church 
 and State decay. 
 
 Though our blindness ask our curses, still do Thou 
 vouchsafe to bless, 
 
 Spare us England's tradesmen-senate, spare her cotton- 
 spun success. 
 
 * " A penny saved is a penny got : 
 
 Firm to this scoundrel maxim keepeth he, 
 
 Ne of its rigour will he bate a jot, 
 
 Till it has quench'd his fire, and banished his pot.' 
 
 Castle of Indolence 
 THE END. 
 
 I
 
 ■!^tM.^lm. 
 
 tHr