For luck, for luck, the boy was born;
He claims, and he shall have, his own!
And, hopeful as the springing morn,
They glisten down the curves of Tone.
That he'll be king, his life one stakes:
When he is king, a wife one takes.

King?—It is night, the dream is done,
And darkness snatches back the crown
That, golden, rose with morning's sun,
And dropp'd in blood o'er Taunton town.
King of a day, said tidings quick,
While expectation falters sick!

Rumour, with omens in her train,
Rustles and hums from hedge to hedge:
The battle's fought!—they lose! they gain!
Alas! delay, that dulls the edge
Of keenest blades! Nay, here rides one
To tell us if 't be lost or won.

And one rides in as one rides out;
And, when the wretched truth is told
At Taunton gates, who does not doubt,
And in the teeth of fate grow bold,
As if he held, to aid his chief,
A citadel in unbelief?

Drop down the veil on blood and tears,
Muffle the ear from women's wail;
Courage still sits with worthiest peers,
However basely fortune fail:
But cowards, in the battle's heat,
Carry in their own hearts defeat.

And he that rode Ambition's chace,
To shine with Europe's highest prize,
Now the most abject of his race,
Fawns to the hands that most despise.
He hath a love: in her embrace
To live, the man can bear disgrace.

And, though they bleed in Taunton town,
And round the Blood Assize crouch pale;
On no man's forehead comes a frown,
Nor women's curses when they wail,
Point the betrayer out for blame,
At mention of Duke Monmouth's name!

A JOURNEY DUE NORTH.

ISCHVOSTCHIK! THE DROSCHKY-DRIVER.

I AM not quite certain, I must premise,
as to the orthography of the Russian Cabby's
name. It is a national characteristic of the
Russians, never to give a direct answer to
a question; and, although I have asked at
least twenty times, of learned Russians how
to spell the droschky-driver's appellation
with correctness, the philologists were for the
most part, evasively dubious and readier to
ask me questions about the head-dresses of
the British Grenadiers, than to give me a
succinct reply. Perhaps, they have not
themselves yet made up their minds as to
the proper position of the vowels and
consonants in the word; for, though M.
Karamsin is generally understood to have
settled the Russian language some years
since, considerable orthographical licence yet
prevails, and is, to some extent,
tolerated. A sovereign, less conciliating than
the Czar Alexander, would very soon set
the matter right by an oukase; and woe
to the Russian then, who didn't mind his
P's and Q's! As it is, there seem to be as
many ways of pronouncing the cabby's
name, as the American prairie. I have
heard him myself called indifferently
Ischvostchik, istvosschik, issvostchik, and
isvoschchik. When you hail him in the street,
you are permitted to take another liberty
with his title, and call out lustily iss'vosch!

The choice of a subject in the driver of
a public conveyance, in any city, familiar
as he must be to every traveller, is not
very defensible on the score of novelty;
but—as I should not have the slightest
hesitation in taking a Piccadilly Hansom
cabman as a type of character, and drawing
him as best I could to the life, if I
had a salutary purpose to serve—I shall
make no more bones about sketching the
ischvostchik, than if he were a new butterfly,
or an inedited fern, or a Niam-Niam,
or any other rare specimen entomological,
or zoological. And I have a plea, if needful,
wherewith to claim benefit of clergy:
this: that the ischvostchik is thoroughly,
entirely, and to the back-bone, in speech,
dress, look, manners and customs, Russian.

I was repeatedly told, while yet new to
the Holy Land, that I must not take St.
Petersburg as by any means a sample of a
genuine Russian city. It was a French, a
German, an English, a cosmopolitan town
—what you will; but for real Russian
customs and costumes I must go to Moscow,
to Novgorod, to Kasan, to Smolensk, to
Kharkoff, or to Vladimir. Error. I do not
think that in the whole world there exists
a nation so thoroughly homogeneous as
Russia. In our little scrap of an island
there are two-score dialects, at least, spoken;
and a real north-countryman can scarcely
make himself understood to a southerner;
but here, if you will once bear in mind the
two divisions of race into Great Russians and
Little Russians, you may go a thousand versts
without finding a vowel's difference in
accentuation, or a hair's breadth alteration in a
caftan or a Kakoshnik. The outlying
nationalities subject to the Double Eagle's sway
—the Fins, the Laps, the German Russians
(Esthonians, Livonians, &c.), the Poles, the
Cossacks and the Tartars, have of course
their different languages and dresses; but
they are not Russians: the Imperial Government
recognises their separate nationality in
everything save taxing them, making soldiers
of them, and beating them; but the vast
mass of millions—the real Russians—are from
province to province, from government to
government, all alike. At the end of a
week's journey you will find the same
villages, the same priests, the same policemen,
the same Moujiks and Ischvostchiks, in
appearance, dress, language, and habits, as at
the commencement of your voyage. You who