ain,
Mordanto in a week from Spain.

A messenger comes all a-reek
Mordanto at Madrid to seek;
He left the town above a week.

Next day the post-boy winds his horn,
And rides through Dover in the morn:
Mordanto's landed from Leghorn.

Mordanto gallops on alone,
The roads are with his followers strewn,
This breaks a girth, and that a bone;

His body active as his mind,
Returning sound in limb and wind,
Except some leather lost behind.

A skeleton in outward figure,
His meagre corps, though full of vigour,
Would halt behind him, were it bigger.

So wonderful his expedition,
When you have not the least suspicion,
He's with you like an apparition.

Shines in all climates like a star;
In senates bold, and fierce in war;
A land commander, and a tar:

Heroic actions early bred in,
Ne'er to be match'd in modern reading,
But by his namesake, Charles of Sweden.[2]

[Footnote 1: Who in the year 1705 took Barcelona, and in the winter
following with only 280 horse and 900 foot enterprized and accomplished
the conquest of Valentia.--_Pope_.

"--he whose lightning pierc'd th'Iberian lines,
Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines,
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
Almost as quickly as he conquer'd Spain."
POPE, _Imitations of Horace_, ii, Sat. 1.

Lord Peterborough seems to have been equally famous for his skill in
cookery. See note to above Satire, Pope's Works, edit. Elwin and
Courthope, iii, 298.--_W. E. B._]

[Footnote 2: See Voltaire's "History of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden."
"He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral or adorn a tale."
JOHNSON, _Vanity of Human Wishes_.]

ON THE UNION

The queen has lately lost a part
Of her ENTIRELY-ENGLISH[1] heart,
For want of which, by way of botch,
She pieced it up again with SCOTCH.
Blest revolution! which creates
Divided hearts, united states!
See how the double nation lies,
Like a rich coat with skirts of frize:
As if a man, in making posies,
Should bundle thistles up with roses.
Who ever yet a union saw
Of kingdoms without faith or law?[2]
Henceforward let no statesman dare
A kingdom to a ship compare;
Lest he should call our commonweal
A vessel with a double keel:
Which, just like ours, new rigg'd and mann'd,
And got about a league from land,
By change of wind to leeward side,
The pilot knew not how to guide.
So tossing faction will o'erwhelm
Our crazy double-botto