Grow dull and ruddy, insolent and chuff,
And think their quondam brethren have enough.
Whilst cripple I, of interest bereft,

Still on the clay-cold margin here am left,
No friendly hand its timely aid supplies,

And still I totter, as I strive to rise.

Yet, twelve long years have I this station kept,

Of all the joys of social life bereft;

Banish'd from friends, from town, and all most dear,

To starve genteel, on forty pounds a year;
Three helpless babes, a sister, and a wife,
To furnish with the requisites of life;
A purse-proud upstart sneering on my farm,
Who'd pledge his soul to do a gownsman harm.
Of fam'd Astrea here no trace is found,
Her feet so tender, and so hard the ground!
Thou, who in time couldst to the cripple send,
By all deserted, so divine a friend;

Who by a word could former health restore,
And break those bands that fetter'd him before;
With pity touch thy lov'd apostle's breast,
To ease my wants, or take me to thy rest;
Small's my request, as little I deserve,
'Tis only that I may not preach and starve ;
Since sacred writings these directions give,
Who at the altar serve, shall by it live.

CONFESSION.

ACOSTA, in his History of the Indies, 1. v. cap. 25, relates a strange mode of confession,

observed

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observed by the Pagans in Japan: "There are,' saith he, "in Ocaca, very high and steep rocks, which have spikes in them, above two hundred fathom high, one of which surmounted the rest for height, and to the Xambuses (a kind of pilgrims, or pretended religious men of that country), terrible to behold: upon the top thereof there is a great rod of iron, three fathom long, placed there artificially; at the end of which is tied a balance, the scales whereof are so big that a man may sit in one of them; and the Coquis (the devils in human shape, whom they worship) will often command one of the said Xambuses to enter into one of them, and there sit: forthwith by an engine, the rod springs forth, and is pendent in the air, and the empty scale mounts up, and the pilgrim sinks proportionably in the other; then the Coquis telleth him, that he must confess all the sins that he can remember he ever committed, with an audible voice; at the recital of which, some of the heathens (who assemble in great numbers to the ceremony) laugh, and others sigh. At every sin mentioned, the other empty scale falls a little, till, having told all, it remains equal with the other, wherein the sorrowful penitent sits: the Coquis turns the wheel, and draws the rod and balance to him, and the pilgrim, empty from all his sins, and clear as the child unborn, comes forth; but if any sin be concealed,

K 3

concealed, the empty scale yields not to an equilibrium, and then if the pilgrim grows obstinate, and will hide any crime, the Coquis casts him down from the top, where instantly he is broken into a thousand pieces: but the terror of the place is such, that few will conceal any thing, and therefore is called sange notocoro, that is, the place of confession."

FLATTERY.

The Speech of Henry Dowdall, Esq. Recorder of Drogheda, to King James II. at his Entry into the Town of Drogheda, April the 7th, 1689. Imprimatur, Patrick Clogher,,

MOST SACRED SIR,

AMONG the many miracles which adorn almost every step and passage of your most sacred Majesty's life, we think none more conspicuous, taken in all its circumstances, and. providential accidents, than your Majesty's late, more than miraculous, landing in this your ancient, loyal, and long suffering kingdom; a blessing by so much the more surprising, by how much the less expected; a blessing of which our ancestors

never could dream, when their thoughts were proudest a blessing for which we ourselves never could hope, when our misfortunes allowed no other consolation but what we were forced to seek in dubious prophecies, or in our almost worn and tried devotion! a blessing, in fine, which late posterity will scarcely believe, be it never so credulous.

For our shares, great Sir, we are forced to confess, that the novelty of our present happiness is still so surprising, that joy of the one side, and wonder of the other, have so divided our souls, that we can scarcely find leisure for a single thought! yet, we cannot but perceive, that as the descending of a God was formerly requisite to the restoring of lapsed men, that even so the coming of a godlike king was absolutely requisite to the redeeming of a loyal, distressed people from a captivity, in its cause, duration, and severity, not to be paralleled in story.

In effect, great Sir, faint beams from a distant sun through so many thick intervening clouds, were scarcely able to dissipate the envenomed fogs, for almost forty years so predominant in this isle; and nothing less could do it than the more powerful warmth of that sunshine, which on your Majesty's first landing overspread our hemisphere.

And though we cannot but utterly abhor and

detest the first moving cause of this your most gracious visit, yet cannot we but praise and bless Providence for having raised to us on the perjury, treachery, and perfidiousness of others, a fair opportunity of exerting those loyal principles which our slaughtered ancestors signed with their blood, and avowed with their dying groans.

Yes, sacred Sir, it must make for the credit of long wronged Ireland, that she still suffered for and with her royal master; and if now there be found in her any distemper, or present humours, it proceeds from too great fulness of pampered traitors, who, gorged with the fat of loyal sufferers, must at length have broke out in the old sores and ulcers of rebellion.

But since it pleased God and you, great Sir, to have preserved the head and heart still sound, the malignance of the distemper being now cast into the extremity of one limb, and the sore being brought to maturity, your Majesty may with safety apply a discretionary medicine.

What remains to me, great Sir, is humbly to implore your Majesty's acceptance of a sacrifice which this day I am commissioned to offer: it is, great Sir, the hearts and hands of this adoring crowd the lives and fortunes of all these, the ancient inhabitants of your Majesty's most loyal town of Drogheda. That their blood is sincere, and proof against the scurvy of rebellion, wit

ness