‘More plainly now, as o’er the tide With swift, but gentle course we glide; The sight embraces in its ken Those dwellings of illustrious men, Where Thames upon his banks descries The brave, the courteous, and the wise. But, Oh! that sight too well recalls The name of one, whose love was shrined Within his river-seated halls, Less richly furnish’d than his mind! For Wisdom had endow’d his heart With all that gilds mortality; But he _was_ man, and Death’s keen dart Changed so much of him as _could_ die, Into his body’s native earth, To give his soul an heavenly birth. Yet, whilst we muse on Time’s career, And hail his care-worn kindred here, The streaming river bears us on To London’s mighty Babylon: And that vast Bridge, which proudly soars, Where Thames through nineteen arches roars, And many a lofty dome on high It raises towering to the sky. ‘There are, whose truth is void of stain, Who write, in Lion Richard’s reign, That o’er these waves extended stood A ruder fabric framed of wood: But when the swift-consuming flames Destroy’d that bulwark of the Thames, Rebuilt of stone it rose to view, Beneath King John its splendours grew, Whilst London pour’d her wealth around, The mighty edifice to found; The lasting monument to raise To his, to her eternal praise, Till, rearing up its form sublime, It stands the glory of all time! ‘Yet here we may not longer stay But shoot the Bridge and dart away, Though, with resistless fall, the tide Is dashing on the bulwark’s side; And roaring torrents drown my song As o’er the surge I drift along.’ “Such then, Mr. Barbican, is my rapid version of those interesting verses contained in the ‘_Cygnea Cantio_;’ and we shall next refer to the famous passage in the Commentary upon it, though, in order to be perfectly explicit, I must previously mention some of the circumstances which caused it to be written.