Come here! Here's a pool that's filthy and dun
And fetid enough for any one.
Halloo, halloo! Come hither, I say!
Old Nick himself has passed this way.
With Death beside on his horse of grey!

Enter several Goblins from different parts of the
                                   Marsh.

                           Second Goblin.
Good evening, brother! The fogs are rich
With the racy flavour of pond and ditch,
And heavy with substance they have gotten
From the muddy waters dead and rotten.—
That was a noble fog last night!
It struck the white moon sanguine bright.
Then muffled it up, like a corpse, from sight.

                          Third Goblin.
'Twas grand to see the vapours creeping,
Like ghosts, through London streets, and steeping
The houses all in a poisonous weeping!
Over the town I flew about,
To hear the people swear and shout
And cough and sneeze in echoing chorus;
And, by the mother-fen that bore us.
The same good sport this night's before us.
The lazy mist spread over all,
And stood in the highways like a wall.
Except when against the links it broke,
And boiled away in a golden smoke,
— I saw two boys to the 'spitals led,
With fractured limbs and wounds that bled:
A woman lay on the kerb-stones, dead,
And a wheel went over an old man's head.

                      Fourth Goblin.
I slid from the outer cold and gloom
Into a sick man's curtained room,
And shook from my wings a gnawing damp:
Straightway he leapt and roared with cramp.

                          Fifth Goblin.
I listened in the air aloft,
And heard how some one cough'd and cough'd:
I crawled through a cranny — stole nigher and nigier—
And gripped him as he sat by the fire.
One might have thought he had felt grim Death,
To see him fight and catch for breath.

                       Sixth Goblin.
There is a girl whose parents pine
Because she wastes in a quick decline.
The crimson fire that lights her cheek
Will have burnt her up in another week;
For every night like a toad I crouch
Beside her hot and feverish couch,
And stab her lungs with misty spears
Forged at evening from the meres.

                        Seventh Goblin.
At the hithermost outskirts of the town,
I have struck to-day a hundred down
With ague-fits, and palsied shaking,
And many sharp and dolorous achings.
In wretched huts by stagnant ditches,
They mutter and jerk like a tribe of witches:
Three in a room, you may see them lie,
With faces blue as a frosty sky.
'Tis droll to watch them nodding their heads
At one another out of their beds!

                         Eighth Goblin.
I, on the vapour's stinging points,
Enter between and wring the joints,
Till, in their bare and windy attics.
The old folks curse their fierce "rheumatics."
They hover about the sinking embers.
And swear the months are all Decembers;
Then rouse themselves with moody grin,
And scorch their bloods with fire of gin.

                         Ninth Goblin.
At the head of a great and chosen legion,
I scour about the neighbouring region.
The sodden walls of the houses crumble
To dust wherever we gnaw and mumble;
But the writhen sallows, alders, and ashes.
That drowse and shiver about the plashes,
Or loll like a set of idle drabs
Over the black and reeking slabs,
We feed with moisture rich and dark,
And clothe with an oozy green their bark.
You may hear their clamorous priests, the frogs,
Singing our praise from the dainty bogs.

                           First Goblin.
A merry life have we led out here!
But the end, alas! is drawing near.
These fens, which so long we have based our joys on,
Some meddlers would rob of their death-dealing poison.
And crown the rich earth with its natural foison.
We have but short time longer to slay:—
To work, then, quickly, while yet you may!
Every one to his separate way!

                      [They glide off in various directions.

             HALF-A-DOZEN LEECHES.

A LEECH is a very odd creature, having
idiosyncracies which have given him great
fame in the world. He belongs to the silkworm
order of beings, in so far as he
comes forth from a cocoon or little habitation
of filaments. But how unlike a silk-worm
in manners and customs, habits and tastes!
He fastens upon his brother animals, and
does not leave them until they become a
little lighter than before; and one particular
kind, the horse-leech, when he can get access
to another particular kind, the medicinal-leech,
makes little ceremony with him, but
sucks him in whole. It is not on the battles
of the leeches, however, that we would lecture,
nor on their medico-chirurgical management;
what we desire is, to pay a little
attention to two or three oddities about
leeches; oddities which are, perhaps, not
generally known to leech-users, but which
are none the less odd for that.

The first oddity relates to the mode of fishing.
If what we read about the Brienne leech
fishing is to be relied on, then do we, most
certainly, not envy the leech fishers. The
country about La Brienne is very dull and
uninteresting; and the people look very
miserable— as they well may do. Walking
about in that district, you are pretty certain
to meet, here and there, with a man, pale,
and straight-haired, wearing a woollen cap
on his head, and having his legs and arms
bare, lie walks along the borders of a marsh,
among the spots left dry by the surrounding
waters, but particularly wherever the vegetation
seems to preserve the subjacent soil
undisturbed. This man —woe-begone aspect,
hollow eyes, livid lips —is a leech fisher; and
from his singular gestures, you would take