to know that the history ends here.
Criminal prosecutions have been followed
by a disfranchising bill, and political Bridgwater
may be considered extinct.

MAY DITTY.

CUCKOO! cuckoo! for love and mirth
My heart is gay ;
I have no wish, no wish on earth,
Sweet, sweet, 'tis May!

The swallows on my roof awake
With twittering notes,
In chorus full, as though they'd break
Their little throats.

Cuckoo! cuckoo! I hear it sing
From out the grove,
And all the hills are echoing
The voice of love.

Sweet dreams from off my eyelids go,
I live again;
I hear the rosebuds talking low
About the rain.

I hear the lambs upon the lea,
The throstle's brood;
The flowing music of the sea,
The breathing wood.

I hear the panting of the brook,
I hear the sigh
O' the lily that the water shook
When hurrying by.

Rise, little head, all golden–ringed,
Lent me by God!
Wake, little spirit, angel–winged,
And flit abroad!

Wee baby in thy tiny bed
Come, crow again!
I'll gather thee that jewel red
Set in our pane!

I'll deck thee all in snowy state
Monarch of spring!
With crimson roses from the gate
I'll crown thee king.

The birds shall pipe and tell our sport
To all things gay,
And we will hold a merry court
This first of May!

ACCORDING TO COCKER.

HAMLET assures us that if a man would
have his memory outlive his life half a
year, he must build churches; "else shall
he suffer not thinking on." The prince had,
doubtless, forgotten (or perhaps he never
knew) the story of the distroyer of Diana's
Temple; otherwise, he surely would have
rather said he must burn churches, and
then, by way of giving (after his wonted
fashion) a sounding finish to the sentence,
he might have forestalled the poet of a
later period, and have spouted to the fair
Ophelia the well–known couplet:

Th' aspiring youth who fired the Ephesian dome
Outlives in fame the pious fool that raised it.

It is possible that he was on the very
point of proposing some such amendment
upon his former reflection when the players
appeared upon the stage and interrupted
him. Perhaps, however, still a surer way
of making the memory outlive the life is to
become the author of some popular school–
book. People never forget the names of
the books they used at school, and it is
natural that this should be so. Up to
quite a recent period it was customary
in "beating the bounds," on All–hallows
day, that a certain number of small boys
should be impressed into the expedition,
and be bumped upon each successive
boundary stone of the parish. The theory
of this savage ceremony was that it tended
to impress the minds of the children with
an indelible recollection of localities, and
that, in after years, in event of any dispute
arising with regard to parochial landmarks
their memories would serve to settle
the disputed point as well as, or better than,
a written record. School–books are the
boundary–stones of the parish of Parnassus.
They are set upon the frontiers, and our
arrival at each of them in succession is
associated with so much mental (and
possibly physical) fricture and abrasion,
that their names and all connected with
them become fixed upon the memory.
Then, the names of the authors of these
terrible "horn–books" are passed down,
from parent to child, perhaps long after
the books themselves have been superseded
by others, and their surviving titles
have ceased to convey any very definite
meaning. Fletcher of Saltoun said that
he did not care who made the laws, provided
only he might write the popular
ballads. In a similar way, an aspirant for
posthumous notoriety would, perhaps, be
justified in exclaiming: Let who will build
churches, or burn them; only let me write
the school–books. But though he will, doubtless,
get the notoriety, yet, as we have just
intimated, it will, probably, be a very
barren one. Stat nominis umbra. His
name will survive, and that is all. Indeed,
it very frequently happens that the names
and expressions which are most commonly
in use are also those of which the least is
known. Household words, as a rule, are
words about which people are content to
hold the most vague and hazy notions: just
as their own country is sometimes almost
the only one in which persons have never
travelled.

Not long ago a play, which had duly
passed under the inquisitorial eye of the
Lord Chamberlain, was enacted for the
first time at one of the London theatres.