In Astor's mansion, where the rich resort, And exiled Britons toss their daily port, And sometimes angels condescend to sip Their balmy hyson with benignant lip, A nook there is to thirsty pilgrims known, But sacred to male animals alone, Where foreign blades receive their morning's whet, As deep almost in juleps as in debt. There from the throng it pleases me at times To pick out subjects for a few odd rhymes. And who could guess, amid this cloud of smoke, That yonder things were hearts of British oak; Or who that knew the country of their birth, Could by the gilding guess the fabric's worth? Come, let us dare these lions to attack, And hang a calf-skin on each recreant back. Some are third cousins of the penny press, Skilful a piquant paragraph to dress; Some in their veins a dash patrician boast-- Them Stülz has banished from their natal coast: Here sits a lecturer, bearing in his mien More glories than he bought at Aberdeen. These are tragedians--wandering stars--and those Some little nobodies no body knows, Manchester men, deep read in calicoes. Thomas, your soul abominates a quack, Great, small, high, low--the universal pack. And sure our London is a proper place Wherein to study and detest the race. But O, consider in a land like this, Which owns but one distinction, aim, and bliss; One only difference, by all confessed, Betwixt earth's vilest offspring and her best; One sole ambition for the young and old, Divine, omnipotent, eternal gold; Where genius, goodness, head and heart are weighed By the false balance of delusive Trade, How small, how impotent is Truth's defence } Against the strides of that arch-fiend, Pretence, } The time's worst poison, blight, and pestilence! } Here, only here, a bold and honest lie Its full allowance of success will buy. No sanctity of station, age, or name, Can check the Charlatan's audacious aim; 'A self-made man' is here a fav'rite phrase, So self-made talents earn their self-made praise. Whate'er a freeman claims to be, he is; He knows all magic and all mysteries; No matter in what sphere the scoundrel shine, He made himself, and that's a right divine.