His temper little mended, Pug from this Bird-cage Walk at last descended Unto the lion and the elephant, His bosom in a pant To see all nature’s Free List thus suspended, And beasts depriv’d of what she had intended. They could not even prey In their own way; A hardship always reckon’d quite prodigious. Thus he revolv’d-- And soon resolv’d To give them freedom, civil and religious. That night there was no country cousins, raw From Wales, to view the lion and his kin; The keeper’s eyes were fix’d upon a saw; The saw was fix’d upon a bullock’s shin: Meanwhile with stealthy paw, Pug hastened to withdraw The bolt that kept the king of brutes within. Now, monarch of the forest! thou shalt win Precious enfranchisement--thy bolts are undone; Thou art no longer a degraded creature, But loose to roam with liberty and nature; And free of all the jungles about London-- All Hampstead’s heathy desert lies before thee! Methinks I see thee bound from Cross’s ark, Full of the native instinct that comes o’er thee, And turn a ranger Of Hounslow Forest, and the Regent’s Park-- Thin Rhodes’s cows--the mail-coach steeds endanger, And gobble parish watchmen after dark:-- Methinks I see thee, with the early lark, Stealing to Merlin’s cave--(_thy_ cave.)--Alas, That such bright visions should not come to pass! Alas, for freedom, and for freedom’s hero! Alas, for liberty of life and limb! For Pug had only half unbolted Nero, When Nero _bolted him_! CRANIOLOGY. ’Tis strange how like a very dunce, Man--with his bumps upon his sconce, Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he Has had, till lately, of Phrenology-- A science that by simple dint of Head-combing he should find a hint of, When scratching o’er those little pole-hills, The faculties throw up like mole-hills; A science that, in very spite Of all his teeth, ne’er came to light, For though he knew his skull had _grinders_, Still there turn’d up no _organ_ finders, Still sages wrote, and ages fled, And no man’s head came in his head-- Not even the pate of Erra Pater, Knew aught about its pia mater. At last great Dr. Gall bestirs him-- I don’t know but it might be Spurzheim-- Tho’ native of a dull and slow land, And makes partition of our Poll-land, At our Acquisitiveness guesses, And all those necessary _nesses_ [Illustration: VIOLINIST.] [Illustration: A PLASTER CAST.]