With stoutest courage. No man on his face
Could see the shade of any heaviness.
So He and Death went proudly on their way
Upon the errand of Almighty God;
And God's smile was the gladness of that path.

And now immediately on this great fight
So terrible a tempest there ensued,
As never any saw or heard the like.
Nigh on a hundred sail of merchantmen
Join'd their Armada when the fight was done,
Rich Indian argosies. Of all the host
But thirty-two e'er reach'd a Spanish port.
Their men-of-war, so riddled by our shot,
Sank one by one; and our Revenge herself,
Disdaining any foreign mastery,
Regarding else her captain's foil'd intent,
Went down, as soon as she was newly mann'd,
Under Saint Michael's Rocks, with all her crew.
The Spaniards said the Devil wrought their loss,
Helping the heretics. But we know well
How God stands by the true man in his work;
And, if he helps not, surely will revenge
The boldly dutiful. My tale is done.

Sir Walter Raleigh—Grenville's cousin—he
Has given the tale in fitter words than mine.
My story looks like shabby beggar's rags
About a hero. But you see the Man.
The diamond shines, however meanly set.
Sir Walter laid his cloak before the Queen;
But Grenville threw his life upon that deck
For Honour's Self to walk on. 'Twas well done.
For fifteen hours our hundred kept at bay
Ten thousand: one poor ship 'gainst fifty-three.
The Spaniard proved that day our English pith.
No new Armada on our cliff's shall look
While English Valour echoes Grenville's fame.

PITY A POOR BRIDGE.

I BELIEVE that, by this time, the public is
pretty familiar with me; if not, I know this,
that I am pretty familiar with the public. I
have carried them on my back now for
eight-and-twenty years, and my ancestors have carried
them for more than eight centuries. My ancestors
were the old roadways across the river
Thames, known as Old London Bridge, while I
am the same roadway (about one hundred feet
westward of the site of the other) known as
New London Bridge. My ancestors were relieved
(by an act of Parliament in seventeen
hundred and sixty, and by several fires at divers
times) of various encumbrances in the shape of
houses and water-works; while I, in this present
scorching month of July, am having my back
mended after a severe course of heavy and
crowded work, and am waiting for something to
turn up that may improve my prospects and
condition.

There is no doubt about it, that I am shamefully
overworked, and no gentleman knows this
better than Mr. Daniel Whittle Harvey, the City
Police Commissioner. He has done everything
that an active gentleman could do, by separating
the carriage traffic over my back into fast and
slow—light and heavy—two lines running one
way, and two the other, but he cannot perform
a miracle. I may not be very long, and I am
certainly not very broad, but I am the most
overloaded thoroughfare in the whole world, for
all that. It was all very well—at least comparatively
well—before those bustling South-Eastern,
South Coast, and North Kent railway
termini began to lay their heads together,
near the hospital that was providentially placed
at my southern base. Then I did enjoy an
occasional calm, and what, I suppose, I must
consider only a fair amount of burdens; but
from that day of steam encroachment, my tranquillity
was at an end. For the last ten years
there has been such a frightful increase of persons
passing through the London-bridge station,
alone, that what numbered six hundred and
twenty-four thousand travellers in eighteen
hundred and forty-eight, has reached thirteen
millions and a half in eighteen hundred and
fifty-eight.

Everybody seems desirous of riding or walking
across my back, and it puzzles me sometimes
to discover what they can find to travel for. It
seems to me that there must be much more
comfort and wisdom in sitting still, or dabbling
with your feet in the water (like I do), than in
walking over the red-hot stones, under the unchecked
glare of a tropical sun, or trusting
yourself to the mercy of a capricious horse, or
the guidance of a daring driver. The public
seem, however, to be of quite another way
of thinking; an average day of four-and-twenty
hours, during the present year (1859),
will witness one hundred and sixty-eight thousand
persons passing across me, from either side:
one hundred and seven thousand on foot, and
sixty-one thousand in vehicles.

These vehicles (during the same average day
of twenty-four hours) number twenty thousand
four hundred and ninety-eight, including fifty-four
horses that are led or ridden. The same
vehicle may, and does, pass over many times in
the course of the day, as well as the same passenger,
turning these figures into the simple
record of bridge journeys; but that, I apprehend,
makes little difference to me. A man is a man,
for all that, and a hop-waggon is still a
hop-waggon.

The waggons and carts in this endless procession
number nine thousand and a quarter; the
"other vehicles"—unclassable trucks of passage
—reach nearly two thousand and a half; the
cabs are close upon four thousand five hundred,
and the omnibuses are four thousand two hundred
and eighty-six.

With regard to these omnibuses alone, they
struggle up like members returned to represent
the outskirts of London in some great central
City parliament. They belong to what may be
called two divisions—the railway traffic and the
through traffic—that is, omnibuses which pass
over my back simply for the railway station, and
others that pass over it on their road to distant
suburbs.

What have I done to Paddington that
Paddington should worry me so? Fifty-three
omnibuses come from that not very interesting
part of London every day, making
twelve double journeys each, by the way of