d moving the mob like a leaf indeed
By a chill wind set a-quiver.

He finds it sport, does our new god Pan
(As did he of the reeds by the river),
To take all the pith from the heart of a man,
To make him a sheep--though a tiger in spring,--
A cruel, remorseless, poor, cowardly thing,
With the whitest of cheeks--and liver!

"Who said I was dead?" laughs the new god Pan
(Laughs till his faun-cheeks quiver),
"I'm still at my work, on a new-fangled plan.
Scare is my business; I think I succeed,
When the Mob at my minstrelsy shakes like a reed,
And I mock, as the pale fools shiver."

Shrill, shrill, shrill, O Pan!
Your Panic-pipes, far from the river!
Deafening shrill, O Poster-Pan!
Turning a man to a timorous brute
With irrational fear. From your frantic flute
Good sense our souls deliver!

Men rush like the Gadaree swine, O Pan!
With contagious fear a-shiver,
They flock like _Panurge's_ poor sheep, O Pan!
What, what shall the merest of manhood quicken
In geese gregarious, panic-stricken
Like frighted fish in the river.

You sneer at the shame of them, Poster-Pan,
Poltroons of the pigeon-liver.
Your placards gibbet them, Poster-Pan,
Who crowd like curs in the cowardly crush,
Who flock like sheep in the brainless rush
With fear or greed a-shiver.

You are half a beast, O new god Pan!
To laugh (as you laughed by the river)
Making a brute-beast out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain
Of Civilisation, which seems but vain
When the prey of your Panic shiver!

[Footnote 1: Pan, the Arcadian forest and river-god, was held to
startle travellers by his sudden and terror-striking appearances.
Hence sudden fright, without any visible cause, was ascribed to Pan,
and called a Panic fear.]

* * * * *

SIR GEORGE AND THE DRAG ON.

_BY A WRITER OF BOOKS._

[Sir GEORGE TREVELYAN, speaking to the Institute of
Journalists, said that "No one was under the obligation of
writing books, unless he was absolutely called to do so by a
commanding genius."]

Oh! tell me quickly--not if Planet Mars
Is quite the best for journalistic pars,
Not if the cholera will play Old Harry,
Not why to-day young men don't and won't marry--
For these I do not care. Not to dissemble,
My pen is, as they say, "all of a tremble"--
The pen that once enthralled the myria