naturally so prosaic as to be enabled to say, with Benedick"I can find out no rhyme to lady but baby, an innocent rhyme," I defy him to persevere in the use of this verse-compelling beverage, without committing poetry. Even a tea-board will convert and stimulate the most inert. Look you there! I am unconsciously lapsing into rhyme-an involuntary Improvisatore!—Tea, I was going to state, inspires such warm poetical desires.-Lo, where it comes again! One would imagine I had dipped my pen in Souchong instead of ink. It absolutely runs away with me, perpetrating bouts rimés in its course, and forcing me to commit to paper the following ADDRESS TO MY KETTLE. Leaving some operatic zany MY KETTLE! Some learned singers, when they try MY KETTLE! They, when their inward feelings boil, And make a most discordant coil, MY KETTLE! You, when you 're chafed, but sing the more; And when just ready to boil o'er, In silent steam your passions soar, MY KETTLE! To hear their strains, one needs must bear And dissipation's dangers share,— THE WIDOW OF THE GREAT ARMY. At the time that the great army under Napoleon perished in the snows of Russia, a French woman, stated to be of respectable family and education, was so deeply affected by the calamity of her country, and her melancholy apprehensions for its future fate, that she became deprived of her senses, put on widows' weeds, and wandered about Paris, bewailing the fate of the unfortunate armament. Dressed in deep sables, she may still almost daily be seen in the Champs Elysées, in the same state of mental alienation; and the Parisians, who allow neither national nor individual sorrows to deprive them of a heartless joke, have long since christened her "The Widow of the Great Army." This unfortunate female is supposed to utter the following stanzas at the period of the first invasion: Half a million of heroes-I saw them all: The war-horses' tramp shook the solid ground, Sword, sabre, and lance of thy chivalry, France, And helmet of brass, and the steel cuirass, Flash'd in the sun as I saw them pass; While day by day, in sublime array, The glorious pageant roll'd away! Where are ye now, ye myriads? Hark! O God! not a sound;-they are stretch'd on the ground, Silent and cold, and stiff and stark: On their ghastly faces the snows still fall, And one winding-sheet enwraps them all. The horse and his rider are both o'erthrown :- For the wolf and the bear; and, when day is flown, Oh, whither are fled those echoes dread, As the host hurraed, and the chargers neigh'd, And the cannon roar'd, and the trumpets bray'd?— Stifled is all this living breath, And hush'd they lie in the sleep of death. They come! they come! the barbarian horde! To ravage thy valleys with fire and sword: All Germany darkens the rolling tide; Sound the tocsin, the trumpet, the drum ! And dash the invaders to earth as they come ! Ah me! my heart-it will burst in twain! THE SPARE BLANKET. COLD was the wind, and dark the night, And housed him at the Golden Lion. His chamber held another bed, But, as it was untenanted, Our hero, without fear or doubt, Undress'd, and put the candle out; Sleep soon o'ertook the weary elf, Who snored like—nothing but himself. 'Tis plain that, since his own bassoon Who very leisurely undress'd, |