m, and verge enough,
The characters of hell to trace;
How through each circling year, on many a night,
Have Severn's waves re-echoed with affright
The shrieks of (maids) through Berkeley's roofs that ring.'

"But let these tales be told hereafter, as no doubt they will be, by the
creatures who now pander to vice, when the satiated and the sullen
chief sinks into decay, or cuts from his emaciated trunk the filthy
excrescences which, like poisonous fungus, suck the sap of honour and of
life. The colonel hath had many trials in this life, and much to
break down a noble and a proud spirit. In earlier days, a question
of birthright, while it cut off one entail, brought on another, which
entailed a name, not the ancient gift of a monarch, but one still more
ancient, and, according to Dodsley's Chronology of the Kings of England,
the origin of British sovereignty itself--a '_filius nullius,_' a title
that left it open to the wearer to have established his own fame, and to
have been the architect of a nobler fortune; for

'Who nobly acts may hold to scorn
The man who is but nobly born.'

"Had the colonel acted thus, there is little doubt but long ere this the
kind heart of his Majesty would have ~230~~warmed into graciousness
as he reflected upon the untoward circumstances which removed from the
eldest born of an ancient house the honours of its armorial bearings;
the _engrailed bar_ might have been erased from the shield, and the
coronet of nobility have graced the elder brother, without invading the
legal designation or claims of the legitimate younger; but

I sing of a day that is gone and past,
Of a chance that is lost, and a die that's cast.

And even now, while I am sermonizing on late events but too notorious,
the busy hum of many voices buzzes a tale upon the ear that sickens with
its unparalleled profligacy; but the English Spy, the faithful historian
of the present times, refuses to stain his pages by giving credit to,
or recording, the imputed profligate connexion. Adieu, _monsieur_ the
colonel; fain would I have passed you by without this comment; but your
association with the black spirits of the 'Age'{3} has placed you upon a
pedestal, the proper mark for satire to shoot her barbed arrows at.

"But let us take a turn down the High Street; and as I live here comes
an old flame of the colonel's, Miss R*g*rs, who is now turned into