If so, unhappy pair, I pity them! Were we to guess our way in the dark a wee farther, I think it not altogether unlikely, that he must have fallen in with his sweetheart abroad, when wandering about on his travels; for what follows seems to come as it were from her, lamenting his being called to leave her forlorn, and return home.

This is all merely supposition on my part, and in the antiquarian style, whereby much is made out of little; but both me and James Batter are determined to be unanimously of this opinion, until otherwise convinced to the contrary.

Love is a fiery and fierce passion everywhere; but I am told that we, who live in a more favoured land, know very little of the terrible effects it sometimes causes, and the bloody tragedies, which it has a thousand times produced, where the heart of man is uncontrolled by reason or religion, and his blood heated into a raging fever, by the burning sun that glows in the heaven above his head.
Here follows the poem of Taffy's master's foreign sweetheart; which, considering it to be a woman's handiwork, is, I daresay, not that far amiss.
SONG OF THE SOUTH.
I.
Of all the garden flowers The fairest is the rose; Of winds that stir the bowers, Oh! there is none that blows Like the south--the gentle south-- For that balmy breeze is ours.
II.
Cold is the frozen north; In its stern and savage mood, 'Mid gales, come drifting forth Bleak snows and drenching flood: But the south--the gentle south-- Thaws to love the willing blood.
III.
Bethink thee of the vales, With their birds and blossoms fair-- Of the darkling nightingales, That charm the starry air In the south--the gentle south,-- Ah! our own dear home is there.
IV.
Where doth Beauty brightest glow, With each rich and radiant charm, Eye of light, and brow of snow, Cherry lip, and bosom warm; In the south--the gentle south-- There she waits, and works her harm V.
Say, shines the Star of Love, From the clear and cloudless sky, The shadowy groves above, Where the nestling ringdoves lie?
From the south--the gentle south-- Gleams its lone and lucid eye.
VI.
Then turn ye to the home Of your brethren and your bride; Far astray your steps may roam, But more joys for thee abide, In the south--our gentle south-- Than in all the world beside.
After reading a lot of the unknown gentleman's compositions in prose and verse, something like his private history, James Batter informs me, can be made out, provided we are allowed to eke a little here and there.

That he was an Englisher we both think amounts to a probability; and, from having an old "Taffy was a Welshman" for a flunkie, it would not be out of the order of nature to jealouse, that he may have resided somewhere among the hills, where he had picked him up and taken him into his kitchen, promoting him thereafter, for sobriety and good conduct, to be his body servant, and gentleman's gentleman.

Where he was born, however, is a matter of doubt, and also who were his folks; but of a surety, he was either born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or rose from the ranks like many another great man.