opinions avowed most hostile to the reigning family; not personally to them, but generally to a monarchical form of government. And that I could not be mistaken in my impression, that my memory cannot have played me false, is evident, from one relic of the conversation which rested upon my ear, and has survived to this day [1839]--thirty and two years from the time. It had been agreed, that no good was to be hoped for, as respected England, until the royal family should be expatriated; and Southey, jestingly considering to what country they could be exiled, with mutual benefit for that country and themselves, had supposed the case--that, with a large allowance of money, such as might stimulate beneficially the industry of a rising colony, they should be transported to New South Wales; which project, amusing his fancy, he had, with the readiness and facility that characterizes his mind, thrown _extempore_ into verse; speaking off, as an improvisatore, about eight or ten lines, of which the three last I perfectly remember, and they were these (by the way I should have mentioned that they took the form of a petition addressed to the King):-- "Therefore, old George, by George we pray Of thee forthwith to extend thy sway Over the great Botanic Bay." The sole doubt I have about the exact words regards the second line, which might have been (according to a various reading which equally clings to my ear)-- "That thou would'st please to extend thy sway." But about the last I cannot be wrong; for I remember laughing with a sense of something peculiarly droll in the substitution of the stilted phrase--"_the great Botanic Bay_," for our ordinary week-day name _Botany Bay_, so redolent of thieves and pickpockets.