Ambition, av’rice, penury incurr’d
By endless riot, vanity, the lust
Of pleasure and variety, dispatch,
As duly as the swallows disappear,
The world of wand'ring knightsand squires to town.
London ingulphs them all! The shark is there,
And the shark's prey; the spendtlırift, and the leech
That sucks him. There ihe fycophant, and he
Who, with bare headed and obsequious bows,
Begs a warm office, doom'd to a cold jail
And groat per diem, if his patron frown.
The levee swarms, as if, in golden pomp,
Were character'd on ev'ry statesinan's door,
“ BATTER'D AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED

“ HERE.”
These are the charms that fully and eclipse
The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe
That lean hard-handed poverty ivflicts,
The hope of better things, the chance to win,
The wish to shine, the thirst to be amus'd,
That at the sound of winter's boary wing
Unpeople all our countries of such herds
Of flutt'ring, loit'ring, cringing, begging, loose
And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast
And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.

Oh thou, resort and mart of all the earth, Chequer'd with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair, That pleaseft and yet shock'st me, I can laugh And I can weep, can hope, and can despond, Feel wrath and pity, when I think on thee ! Ten righteous would have sav'd a city once, And thou hast many righteous.-Well for theeThat falt preserves thee; more corrupted else, And therefore more obnoxious, at this hour Than Sodom in her day had pow'r to be, For whom God heard his Abr’am plead in vain.

THE TAS K.

BOOK IV.

ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

The post comes in.-The news-paper is read.—The

world contemplated at a distance.- Address to Winter.—The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.- Address to evening.--d brown ftudy.-Fall of frow in the evening.-—The waggoner.- A poor

family-piece. The rural thief.—Public houses,—The multitude of them censured. The farmer's daughter: what She was-what she is.-The fimplicity of country manners almost loft.-Causes of the change.--Desertion of the country by the rich.--Neglect of magistrates.—The militia principally in fault. - The new recruit and his transformation.--Reflection on bodies corporate.—The love of rural objects natural to all, and never to be totally extinguishedl.