In one of the Tales--of the Council of Nice, in the fourth century, Mr. Smith indulges his usual felicitous vein of humour, in a burlesque which he puts into the mouth of a slave of the Bishop of Ethiopia,--"a little, corpulent, bald-headed, merry-eyed man of fifty, whose name was Mark; whose duty it was to take charge of the oil, trim the lamps, and perform other menial offices in the church of Alexandria." The profane wight deserved, for his wit, a better place. * * * * * THE JUST DYING SPEECH AND CONFESSION OF THE PAGAN IMMORTALS. Alack and alas! it hath now come to pass, That the Gods of Olympus, those cheats of the world, Who bamboozled each clime from the birthday of Time, Are at length from their mountebank eminence hurl'd. On their cold altar-stone are no offerings thrown, And their worshipless worships no passenger greets, Though they still may have praise for amending our ways, If their statues are broken for paving the streets. The Deus Opt. Max. of these idols and quacks Is now thrust in a corner for children to flout, And the red thunder-brand he still grasps in his hand. Lights not Jupiter Tonans to grope his way out. Their Magnus Apollo no longer we follow, He's routed and flouted and laid on the shelf, And no poet's address will now reach him unless He can play his own lyre and flatter himself. As for Bacchus the sot, he has drain'd his last pot, And must lay in the grave his intoxicate head, For although by his aid he his votaries made Full often dead drunk, they have now drunk him dead. O Mars, battle's Lord! canst thou not draw a sword, As forth from its temple thy statue we toss? We want not thy lance, since our legions advance Beneath the bless'd banner of Constantine's cross. Juno, Venus, and Pallas, to shame were so callous, And have always so widely from decency swerved, That it well might be urged, if their statues were scourged And then thrown in the kennel, their doom was deserved. The pontiffs and priests, who have lost all their feasts, And the oracles shorn of their hecatomb herds, Having nothing to carve, if they don't wish to starve, Must feed upon falsehoods and eat their own words. O'er these mountebanks dead, be this epitaph read, "The Gods, Priests and Oracles buried beneath, Who were ever at strife which should lie most in life, Here _lie_ all alike in corruption and death." * * * * * SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. * * * * * SHELLEY AT OXFORD. A delightful paper, entitled, _Percy Bysshe Shelley at Oxford_ is now in course of appearance in the _New Monthly Magazine_, from the pen of a fellow collegian and an early admirer of the genius of the youthful poet. It is in part conversational. Thus, Shelley _loquitur_:--