Doubtless the Surgeons will be glad
To buy-few subjects can be had

In these hard times, nor need they dread
Too nice an inquest on the dead-

They're gone, and that's enough, but how?
Is quite a useless question now:

If nature's act, none can condemn,
If murdered, 'tis all one to them,
They have a subject to dissect,
The living, let the laws protect.*

Gold prompted thus a crime to men,

In hell undreamt of until then;

And plunged below that hideous crew

Whom even the damned with horror view,

the garden."" The boy struggled a little with his arms and legs in the water; the water bubbled for a minute. We waited till these symptoms were past, and then went in, and afterwards I think we went out, and walked down Shoreditch to occupy the time."-Confession of Bishop, the "burker."

* That fiend in human shape, the murderer Burke, whose unheard of crime has added a new word to the language; admitted in his confession, having deprived fifteen human beings of life, in the short period of little more than a year. The greater portion of these victims, met their death by violent means, having been either strangled or suffocated yet it does not appear from the evidence given at the trial, that any misgiving arose in the mind of the Surgeon or his Assistants, by whom the bodies were purchased, as to how they were procured; nor was it through their instrumentality, that this wholesale murderer was at length brought to justice,

:

As thunder-stricken, they emerge

Yelling from Hell's infernal surge,

And feeling in each boiling brain,

The full intensity of pain!

Kings, patriots, priests, are bought and sold

For Gold, for all persuasive Gold!
That mute, though eloquent appeal,
To rouse from slumber torpid zeal,
And hurl each passion's living snake,
Against the world for Mammon's sake.

Knowledge is power," we have been told,
More true had this been said of Gold!
That mighty lever, by whose aid,
Nations are rescued, or betrayed;
Men sold to slavery, and again
Redeemed from slavery's galling chain;
Worlds sought-discovered-civilized,
By all the arts their conquerors prized;
Mingled with vices, such as ne'er
Had found before a footing there;
But which to Pluto's great content

Has many a soul to Hades sent.

Most glorious Gold! Columbia's horde

Soon felt th' exterminating sword,

When Thou before the Spaniard's gaze,
Bade thy red bars and ingots blaze!
What then to him was mercy's prayer?
Even God had called in vain to spare!

So brightly didst thou shine, to win

The conquering homicide to sin,
As rushing on, all blood-defiled,

He grimly seized on thee, and smiled!

Oh Gold, thou bright and glittering snare,

For thee, what will not mortals dare?
Hell's magnet! whose attractive power
Draws headlong down, from hour to hour,

A mighty deluge of the damned,

"Till these dark labyrinths are crammed!
Thou prop on which our empire stands-
Briareus! with thy hundred hands,
And multitudinous limbs, employed
With us, in filling Hell's dark void,
Which had been empty without thee,
Of Hades the Divinity!

But whither has the whirl of thought, Thus moved by all that Gold has wrought For Hell's dark empire, led me on?

Alas! our occupation's gone,

If once with credulous haste, we yield
To frightened imbeciles the field;

Who rendered by their sufferings dumb,

To terror, not to right succumb.

Shall we to the opinion bow

Of one who doth his shame avow,

Yet hopes to mystify our ears,

And cheat our judgment through our fears?

Make us his panders to assuage

Against the sex his dastard rage;
And maddened by the escapade,
His wife in luckless moment made,
Damn the whole race of womankind,
Because one was to sin inclined.

If, let me ask, his erring spouse
Had not transgressed her nuptial vows,
Would thus the trumpet of his anger
Have poured forth such infernal clangor,

Astounding with its horrid noise

That sex, the source of all our joys?
No-'twas that solitary fact—

(I laud her for the glorious act)

That filled to bursting, since his fall,

His mind with bitterness and gall,

Gave to his thoughts this crooked twist, And made him a mesogamist.

Thus having vented forth his spite,
Down Belial sat, while black as night
His brow became, from under which
Two fiery eyes like burning pitch,
Glared fiercely on th' assembled crowd,
As doth the lightning from its shroud,
By way of telling to the world

A thunder-bolt will soon be hurled.
This made the less pugnacious feel
A tremor strange from head to heel,
Which bade them cautiously beware
Provoking an unmuzzled bear,

Whose wrath, like powder would ignite
The moment it was touched with light.
In fact, the chemically wise

Much wished his brain to analyze,
And whisp'ring to each other, said
There's too much phosphorus in his head,
And that's well known, when in excess,
(That is, four grains, or more or less)