How many delightful things are lost to the world, by the world's own laziness. Why have we not a Boswell in every city? Her majesty pays a laureate, who writes nothing but the annual receipt for his pension. Why not transfer the office to a Boswell? why not establish a Cabinet-dinner Boswell? a Buckingham-palace Boswell? a Windsor Boswell? with orders to make their weekly returns of gaiety and gossipry to the Home Department; to be thence issued by instalments of anecdote, in volumes, like "Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors," or in columns, like the protocols of the Montpensier marriage, for the laughter of mankind? But the report of a heavy gun, and all eyes turned to a huge shell, making its curve a mile above our heads, reminded us that the artillery had a field-day as we passed Woolwich, and that there was every possibility that this vagrant messenger of destruction, might plump into our midships. The consternation on board grew, as it descended, looking bigger and blacker every instant. If it had come on board, it must have torn us up like paper. The catastrophe would have been invaluable to the journals of the empire, at this moment of a dearth of news, enough to make bankrupts of all the coffee-houses in London, and close every club from Charing Cross to Hyde Park Corner. _We_ should all have been immortal in paragraphs without number. Coroners, surgeons, poets, and special juries, would have made their reputation out of _us_; and for a month of hot weather, we should have been a refreshing topic in the mouths of mankind. But it was otherwise decreed: the shell dropped within a foot of the steamer, and we were _quittes pour la peur_. I fired a poetic shot at Woolwich in return. THE ROYAL ARSENAL. Woolwich--Woolwich, The Thames is thy ditch, And stout hearts are thy fortification. Let come who come may, All is open as day, Thy gates are as free as thy nation. Let the King of the French Build wall, or dig trench, Though he has no more princes to marry, _Our_ trench is the sea, And _our_ walls are the free, And we laugh at thy "_grande enceinte, Paris._" Deep and dark on their quay, Like lions at bay, Stand the guns that set earth at defiance; With mountains of ball, Which, wherever they fall, With their message make speedy compliance. Along the Parade Lies the brisk carronade, With Wellington's joy, the twelve-pounder. And the long sixty-eight, Made for matters of weight, The world has no arguments sounder. There stands the long rocket, That shot, from its socket, Puts armies, pell-mell, to the rout, sir; At Leipsic, its tail Made Napoleon turn pale, And sent all his _braves_ right about, sir.