As in Shylock, who cried, "Plesh ma heart! ish dat

law?"

Off went his three hats, And he look'd as the

cats

Do, whenever a mouse has escaped from their claw. "-Ish't the law!"-why, the thing won't admit of a

query

"No doubt of the fact, Only look at the Act;
Acto quinto, cap. tertio, Dogi Falieri-
Nay, if, rather than cut, you'd relinquish the debt,
The Law, Master Shy, has a hold on you yet.
See Foscari's 'Statutes at large '-' If a Stranger
A Citizen's life shall, with malice, endanger,
The whole of his property, little or great,
Shall go, on conviction, one half to the State,
And one to the person pursued by his hate;

And, not to create Any farther debate,
The Doge, if he pleases, may cut off his pate.'
So down on your marrowbones, Jew, and ask mercy!
Defendant and Plaintiff are now wisy wersy."

What need to declare How pleased they all were At so joyful at end to so sad an affair?

Or Bassanio's delight at the turn things had taken,
His friend having saved, to the letter, his bacon?-
How Shylock got shaved, and turn'd Christian, though

late,

To save a life-int'rest in half his estate?

C2

How the dandified Lawyer, who'd managed the thing,
Would not take any fee for his pains but a ring
Which Mrs. Bassanio had given to her spouse,
With injunctions to keep it on leaving the house?-

How when he, and the spark Who appeared as
his clerk,

Had thrown off their wigs, and their gowns, and their jetty coats,

There stood Nerissa and Portia in petticoats?-
How they pouted, and flouted, and acted the cruel,
Because Lord Bassanio had not kept his jewel?-

How they scolded and broke out, Till having their
joke out,

They kissed, and were friends, and, all blessing and blessed,

Drove home by the light Of a moonshiny night, Like the one in which Troilus, the brave Trojan knight, Sat astride on a wall, and sigh'd after his Cressid?

All this, if 'twere meet, I'd go on to repeat, But a story spun out so's by no means a treat, So, I'll merely relate what, in spite of the pains I have taken to rummage among his remains, No edition of Shakspeare, I've met with, contains; But, if the account which I've heard be the true

one,

We shall have it, no doubt, before long, in a new In an MS., then, sold For its full weight in gold,

And knock'd down to my friend, Lord Tomnoddy, I'm

told

It's recorded that Jessy, coquettish and vain,
Gave her husband, Lorenzo, a good deal of pain;

Being mildly rebuked, she levanted again,

Ran away with a Scotchman, and, crossing the main, Became known by the name of the "Flower of Dun

blane."

That Antonio, whose piety caused, as we've seen,

Him to spit upon every old Jew's gaberdine,

And whose goodness to paint All colours were
faint,

Acquired the well-merited prefix of "Saint,"
And the Doge, his admirer, of honour the fount,
Having given him a patent, and made him a Count,
He went over to England, got nat'ralis'd there,
And espous'd a rich heiress in Hanover Square.

That Shylock came with him; no longer a Jew,
But converted, I think may be possibly true,
But that Walpole, as these self-same papers aver,
By changing the y in his name into er,
Should allow him a fictitious surname to dish up,
And in Seventeen-twenty-eight make him a Bishop,
I cannot believe-but shall still think them two men
Till some Sage proves the fact "with his usual acumen."

MORAL.

From this tale of the Bard It's uncommonly hard

If an editor can't draw a moral.-'Tis clear,
Then, in ev'ry young wife-seeking Bachelor's ear
A maxim, 'bove all other stories, this one drums,
"PITCH GREEK TO OLD HARRY, AND STICK TO

CONUNDRUMS!!"

To new-married ladies this lesson it teaches, "You're 'no that far wrong' in assuming the breeches!"

Monied men upon 'Change, and rich Merchants it

schools

To look well to assets-nor play with edge tools!

Last of all, this remarkable History shows men,
What caution they need when they deal with old-clothes-

men!

So bid John and Mary To mind and be wary, And never let one of them come down the are'!

From St. Mark to St. Lawrence-from the Rialto to the Escurial-from one Peninsula to another!-it is but a hop, step and jump-your toe at Genoa, your heel at Marseilles, and a good hearty spring pops you down at once in the very heart of Old Castile. That Sir Peregrine Ingoldsby, then a young man, was at Madrid soon after the peace of Ryswick, there is extant a long correspondence of his to prove. Various passages in it countenance the supposition that his tour was partly undertaken for political purposes; and this opinion is much strengthened by certain allusions in several of his letters addressed, in after life, to his friend, Sir Horace Mann, then acting in the capacity of Envoy to the Court of Tuscany. Although the Knight spent several months in Spain, and visited many of her principal cities, there is no proof of his having actually "seen Seville," beyond the internal evidence incidentally supplied by the following legend. The events to which it alludes, were, of course, of a much earlier date, though the genealogical records of the "Kings of both the Indies" have been in vain consulted for the purpose of fixing their precise date, and even Mr. Simpkinson's research has failed to determine which of the royal stock rejoicing in the name of Ferdinand is the hero of the legend. The conglomeration of Christian names usual in the families of the haute noblesse of Spain, adds to the difficulty; not that this inconvenient accumulation of prefixes is peculiar to the country in question, witness my excellent friend Field-Marshal Count Herman Karl Heinrich Socrates von der Nodgerrie zü Pfefferkorn, whose appellations puzzled the recording clerk of one of our Courts lately, -and that not a little.

That a splendid specimen of the genus Homo, species Monk, flourished in the earlier moiety of the 15th century, under the appellation of Torquemada, is notorious, and this fact might seem to establish the era of the story; but then his name was John-not Dominic-though he was a Dominican, and hence the mistake, if any, may perhaps have originated-but then again the