Lower down, at Whitehall stairs, we are face to face again with Roundheads, and regicides, and gunpowder plots; lower still, and we are at the Tower, with its cruel tyrannies and beheadings of traitors and patriots; and then, we find ourselves amidst a sea of masts which bear the English flag to the uttermost parts of the earth.

No wonder our river has been so poetical:--it has deserved it! But, really, if all the poems that have been written in its honour could be collected in one volume, what a prodigious tome it would be!--what a medley of versification it would present!" "Sure you've forgotten the Shannon entirely," observed Lady Dasher in her plaintive way.
She was certainly waking up from her normal melancholic condition; for, before this, she had been seen to smile--a phenomenon never noticed in her before by her oldest acquaintance.
"You have quite forgotten the Shannon! My poor dear papa, when he was alive, used to say that it was the finest river in the world.

I remember he had a favourite song about it--I don't know if I quite recollect it now, but, I'll try." "Do, Lady Dasher, do," said Mr Mawley, who, having been paying great attention to Bessie the while, wished, I suppose, to ingratiate himself with her mother.
"I must put on the brogue, you know," said she, looking round with an affectation of shyness, which was most incongruous on her melancholy visage; it was just like a death's head trying to grin, I thought to myself;--and then, she commenced, in a thin, quavering voice, the lay of the departed earl, her "poor dear papa." "`O! Limerick is be-yewtifool, as iveryba-ady knows, And round about the city walls the reever Shannon flows; But 'tis not the reever, nor the feesh, that preys upon my mind, Nor, with the town of Limerick have I any fault to find!'" "Ah! Very nice indeed! Thank you, Lady Dasher, thank you!" said the vicar, when she had got thus far, and succeeded in arresting the progress of her ladyship's melody; otherwise, she might have gone on the live-long summer day with the halting ditty, for it consisted, as she subsequently told us, of no less than five-and-forty verses, all in the same pleasant strain! "I don't think," said I, to change the conversation, "that poetry is nearly as highly regarded in the present day, as it was some forty years back or so--if one may judge by the biographies of literary men of that time." "But, it sells more readily," said Mr Mawley; "not only do fresh debutantes appear, but new editions of the old poets come out daily." "That may be," said I.

"But they are not nearly so highly appreciated.
I suppose it is because poetry is not so much a rarity now.

We have so many mediocre poets, that our taste is more exigent.