I cannot write in hieroglyphics;
But now, a bright eye o'er the cliff fix,
To watch your coming to our shores,
Saluting you with bellowing roars;
Sounds that comprise the highest greeting,
And tell of wrongs far worse than eating.
To die is natural—to be eaten,
Earth's law; but to be basely beaten—
Forming no part of Nature's rules—
Shows that some men are brutes and fools.

Now, Royal Cousin, would'st thou know
Why thus my nostrils sniff and blow;|
'Tis wrath, and scorn, and smell of blood—
Smithfield blaspheming in its mud—
Drovers, with tuck'd-up sleeves, and faces
Like devils, who wager at grimaces:
The hail of blows—the torches' glare;
The rushing madness, foulness, flare;
While civic magnates sit and dine
On beef—our beef! and o'er their wine,
Declare this murderous market-place
An honour to the human race.

Some sons of Adam—worthy men,
Have sought to purify this den;
Select a spot beyond the walls,
Where every Bull that bows and falls,
May, with becoming dignity,
Adjust his mantle ere he die.
Well, if 'twere so; and since by fate
And metaphysical aid, his date
Is ever shorten'd; in his end
Remember this—he dies a friend.

But men who eat us, boiled and roast,
Too oft forget their Bovian host;
Nay more, forget their fellow-creatures
In praising Smithfield's murderous features,
With all the vices, fevers, groans,
That breed a curse beneath its stones.
Wherefore, before 'tis swept away,
On liveried marrow-bones they pray
That the Most Gracious Queen alive
Would only take a morning drive,
And be convinced at once—smell, see,
The market's rare salubrity;
And grant her sanction to a scheme
Worthy of wisdom's brightest beam,
If any change be on the cards—
To move it just a hundred yards.

But, Royal Cousin, your high mission,
To Fifty One's Great Exhibition,
Is not to show your ancient learning,
But into practice knowledge turning;
And therefore you will see us righted,
Although the "City" be benighted.
I, full of hope, to this great end,
A Cattle-market Model send—
Projected by one Thomas Dunhill—
Where pumps for ever may the tun fill;
Where spaces, and allotments, large,
Shall sink with shame the City barge;
Where screens shall rise up, broad and high,
For safety, care, and decency;
With houses, board-rooms, office, hall—
For governors, sellers, buyers—all;
No longer London's hideous fair,
But built in suburbs, and fresh air.

INDIAN RAILROADS AND BRITISH
COMMERCE.

NEARLY two hundred and fifty years have
elapsed since a small band of English merchant
adventurers went out, urged by a spirit of
enterprise almost heroic in those days of dark
and difficult navigation, and established
themselves under the protection of native princes,
at Surat, then one of the principal, now a
decayed town and port on the eastern coast
of the Indian Peninsula. A few years later
Bombay, the germ of our Indian empire, fell
to us as part of the marriage portion which
Catherine of Braganza brought to our own
Charles the Second.

In those days the Portuguese, the Dutch,
and the French, had triumphantly established
many and rich colonies and dependencies, in
seas where the British flag was scarcely
known, unless when borne by pirates and
buccaneers. Toward the close of the seventeenth
century, the humble merchant who then
represented the struggling fortunes of the
East India Company in Bengal, having
negotiated the purchase of a small tract of land
for a factory on the banks of the Ganges,
selected the site for the future Calcutta, the
city of Palaces, round the spot where he was
accustomed to smoke his hookah under the
shade of a wide-spreading tree.

The rising wealth, power, and influence, of
the British Merchant Company excited the
suspicions of their neighbours; the native
Indian princes, urged by the jealousy and the
intrigues of the French and Portuguese, who
had preceded us in forming settlements,
commenced a series of wars. More than once
the fate of our future empire hung upon a
thread; the fate of the officers and ladies
thrust into the Black Hole of Calcutta, when
that city was besieged and taken by Surajah
Dowlah, was a favourite tale of horror among
our grandmothers.

It happened, however, that among the
clerks sent out to keep the accounts of the
Company, at seventy pounds a year, was
one Robert Clive, the unruly son of a poor
Shropshire clergyman. He, finding himself
abandoned in a besieged fort, by cowardly
incompetent officers, threw down the pen,
took up the sword, and commenced a career
of conquest, second only in marvellous success
to that of Napoleon, during which he laid,
broad and deep, the foundations of the empire
which now extends from Cape Comorin to
the boundaries of the Chinese and Burmese
empires.

It was in 1757, at the battle of Plassey,
Clive—commanding a little army of English
and seapoys, first disciplined by himself—
defeated Surajah Dowlah at the head of
seventy thousand native troops, and conquered
the whole of Bengal at a blow. What Clive
commenced, Warren Hastings, and a constant
succession of men eminent for military and
administrative skill, completed. Cornwallis