Good Chancellor Van, (Who’s a very wise man), Would persuade poor John Bull, (Who’s a bit of a fool,) That _paper_, though _rags_, (This is one of his brags) Is as good as pure gold. And yet we are told He’d entail degradation On our brave sister nation, For merely believing _Transubstantiation_. You’d have reason’d much better, Dear Van, had you said, That your wig block, though wood, Was as good as your head. ❦ [Sidenote: Hyder Ali Khan.] In the following extract from the speech of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, on the subject of the Nabob of Arcot’s debts, the reader is led by all the enthusiasm of characteristic feeling and the ornamental graces of imagination which distinguished that orator, to the contemplation of a great though savage mind, which he so strongly paints as struggling against the toils of oppressive power, and in the operation of determined revenge, _collecting, calculating, and measuring_ the vengeance with which he purposed to visit his oppressors. “When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who either would sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole Carnatick an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those against whom the faith which holds the moral elements of the world together, was no protection. He became at length so confident of his force so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatsoever of his dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy and every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and, compounding all the materials of fury, havock, and desolation into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatick. Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war, before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havock. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function, fathers torn from children, husbands