It appears that there were corn-laws, or at least corn-monopolists, in days of yore as well as now. A dignitary of the church (not _our_ church), the bishop of Mentz, had well-stored granaries, and fared sumptuously. A time of scarcity arrived. The populace begged for bread; but the bishop would only give them blessings. These would not fill the stomach, and the clamour becoming louder, the bishop waxed wroth. He flung open one of his granaries containing but little grain. The people rushed in—he bolted the doors—and set fire to the building! Murder will be out, sooner or later, and even punished in this world. The rats and the mice took up the cause of their masters. They cut through the floors and ceilings of the palace—nibbled holes in the arras—and poked their little noses through to smell the fat bishop. This was notice to quit, or furnish a cannibal supper for the unwelcome intruders. “They gnawed the arras above and beneath, They ate each savoury dish up. And shortly their sacrilegious teeth Began to nibble the bishop!” The holy man betook himself to a tower in the middle of the Rhine; (Tours des Rats) but the nimble little quadrupeds swam across in legions—scaled the tower—and devoured the bishop! One morning his skeleton there was seen, By a load of flesh the lighter, They had picked his bones uncommonly clean, And eaten his very mitre! The moral is good, though the tale is improbable. But if the AUTO DA FÉ of the bishop was a romance, the atrocity of the action has too often been surpassed even in our time—and that by “butcherly blockheads” in the cause of bigotry and superstition, though in the name of religion! I suspect that the moral of the “Mouse or Rat Tower” lies much deeper than is supposed. It seems to indicate that, although the rich and the powerful may sometimes evade the law, they can never escape punishment. The inward monitor cannot be stifled, cross what rivers, seas, or mountains we may— “Cœlum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.” which I would liberally translate thus:— O’er sea and land the guilty flies, To blunt the stings of conscience keen; Vain hope! That “worm that never dies,” Preys on his vitals all unseen! The mice were meant to represent the conscience of the cruel bishop, from which, neither the streams of the Rhine nor the battlements of the tower could protect him. CHANGE OF SCENE.