"brave
     shops of ware" were "up stairs and the drapers and
     poulterers of Graccchurch Street, to whom conscience was
     "Dutch or Spanish," flout and jeer him. A trip to Southwark,
     the King's Bench, and to the Blackman Street demireps,
     proves that "conscience is nothing." In St. George's Fields,
     "rooking rascals," playing at "nine pins," tell him to prate
     on till he is hoarse." Espying a windmill hard by, he hies
     to the miller, whose excuse for not dealing with him was,
     that he must steal out of every bushel "a peek, if not three
     gallons." Conscience then trudges on "to try what would
     befall i' the country," whither we will not follow him.

I delight in a Fiddler's Fling, and revel in the exhilarating perfume of those odoriferous garlands * gathered on sunshiny holidays and star-twinkling nights, bewailing how disappointed lovers go to sea, and how romantic young lasses follow them in blue jackets and trousers!

Nay, rather than the tuneful race should be extinct, expect to see me some night, with my paper lantern and cracked spectacles, singing you woeful tragedies to love-lorn maids and cobblers' apprentices." *

And, carried away by his enthusiasm to the days of jolly Queen Bess, the Lauréat of Little Britain, with a countenance bubbling with hilarity, warbled con spirito, as a probationary ballad for the Itinerant ship, (!)

THE KNIGHTING OF THE SIRLOIN.

Elizabeth Tudor her breakfast would make

On a pot of strong beer and a pound of beefsteak,

Ere six in the morning was toll'd by the chimes—

O the days of Queen Bess they were merry old times!

From hawking and hunting she rode back to town,

In time just to knock an ambassador down;

Toy'd, trifled, coquetted, then lopp'd off a head;

And at threescore and ten danced a hornpipe to bed.

With Nicholas Bacon,1 her councillor chief,

One day she was dining on English roast beef;

That very same day when her Majesty's Grace *

Had given Lord Essex a slap on the face.