Gold! and gold! ’twas the burden still! To gain the Heiress’s early goodwill There was much corruption and bribery-- The yearly cost of her golden toys Would have given half London’s Charity Boys And Charity Girls the annual joys Of a holiday dinner at Highbury. Bon-bons she ate from the gilt _cornet_; And gilded queens on St. Bartlemy’s day; Till her fancy was tinged by her presents-- And first a Goldfinch excited her wish, Then a spherical bowl with its Golden fish, And then two Golden Pheasants. Nay, once she squall’d and scream’d like wild-- And it shows how the bias we give to a child Is a thing most weighty and solemn:-- But whence was wonder or blame to spring If little Miss K.--after such a swing-- Made a dust for the flaming gilded thing On the top of the Fish Street column? HER EDUCATION. According to metaphysical creed, To the earliest books that children read For much good or much bad they are debtors-- But before with their A B C they start, There are things in morals, as well as art, That play a very important part-- “Impressions before the letters.” Dame Education begins the pile, Mayhap in the graceful Corinthian style, But alas for the elevation! If the Lady’s maid or Gossip the Nurse With a load of rubbish, or something worse, Have made a rotten foundation. Even thus with little Miss Kilmansegg, Before she learned her E for egg, Ere her Governess came, or her masters-- Teachers of quite a different kind Had “cramm’d” her beforehand, and put her mind In a go-cart on golden castors. Long before her A B and C, They had taught her by heart her L. S. D. And as how she was born a great Heiress; And as sure as London is built of bricks, My Lord would ask her the day to fix, To ride in a fine gilt coach and six, Like Her Worship the Lady May’ress. Instead of stories from Edgeworth’s page, The true golden lore for our golden age, Or lessons from Barbauld and Trimmer, Teaching the worth of Virtue and Health, All that she knew was the Virtue of Wealth, Provided by vulgar nursery stealth With a Book of Leaf Gold for a Primer. The very metal of merit they told, And praised her for being as “good as gold!” Till she grew as a peacock haughty; Of money they talk’d the whole day round, And weigh’d desert, like grapes, by the pound, Till she had an idea from the very sound That people with nought were naughty. They praised--poor children with nothing at all! Lord! how you twaddle and waddle and squall Like common-bred geese and ganders! What sad little bad little figures you make To the rich Miss K., whose plainest seed-cake Was stuff’d with corianders!