Before me is the tavern! The lapse of years has hardly bored an additional excavation in its dusky window-curtain, or borrowed a single shade from the boards of its faded sign. But its inmates have vanished; their laughter is no longer heard in their place; and the red-brick wall of the Ship stands before me like the cemetery of their mirth, their wit, and their good-humour. In my youth I was wild--blame me you that have never been so--and I loved to mingle in this scene of rustic joviality, to listen to the remarks of untutored simplicity, to envy those who had grown grey untainted by the corruptions of “this great Babel,” and to feel how truly it was said, Where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise. Many years ago I looked upon these boyish pursuits with an eye very different from that which is now cast back towards them. Many years ago, I thought nothing disgraceful which was not incompatible with innocence in myself and charity towards my fellow-creatures. What would you have? I have grown more prudent, and I am not so happy. The great room of this humble building was the curia of the village. In it the patriarchs of the place held their nightly sittings, and discussed ale and politics with unremitting assiduity. There was no inebriety, no tumult, no ill-mannered brutality in their sessions; everything was conducted with the greatest order and tranquillity; the old men assembled with all the gravity, with all the earnestness, perhaps with much of the wisdom, of great statesmen. Alas! ye profane ones, ye smile. Ye look with contempt upon my rustic curia and my weather-beaten statesmen. And what are the great ones of this earth? Shall not the beings of a more exalted sphere contemplate with equal scorn the wranglings of more honoured senates? You turn with disgust from the eloquence of a Huggins or a Muggins! Look ye then to the oratory of a Cicero, to the patriotism of a Brutus, or, if you will, to the commanding energies of a Pitt and a Fox! Years roll on, and--what are they?