In short, there's no end to the treacheries Of man or maid who once a sketcher is, The livelier, too, their fancies are, The more they'll falsify each spot; As any dolt can give what's _there_, But men of genius give what's _not_. Then come your travellers, false as they,-- All Piranesis, in their way; Eking out bits of truth with fallacies, And turning pig-stys into palaces. But, worst of all, that wordy tribe, Who sit down, hang them, to _describe_; Who, if they can but make things fine, Have consciences by no means tender In sinking all that, will not shine, All vulgar facts, that spoil their splendour:-- As Irish country squires they say, Whene'er the Viceroy travels nigh, Compound with beggars, on the way, To be lock'd up, till he goes by; And so send back his Lordship marvelling, That Ireland should be deem'd so starveling. This cant, for instance,--how profuse 'tis Over the classic page of E----e! Veiling the truth in such fine phrase, That we for poetry might take it, Were it not dull as prose, and praise, And endless elegance can make it.--T. MOORE. _Metropolitan_. [11] The Santa Casa. * * * * * ASMODEUS IN LONDON. (_From the New Monthly Magazine_.) I was alone with Sleep. * * * * * I woke with a singular sense of feebleness and exhaustion, and turning my dizzy eyes---beheld the walls and furniture of my own chamber in London. Asmodeus was seated by my side reading a Sunday newspaper--his favourite reading. "Ah!" said I, stretching myself with so great an earnestness, that I believed at first my stature had been increased by the malice of the Wizard, and that I stretched from one end of the room to the other--"Ah! dear Asmodeus, how pleasant it is to find myself on earth again! After all, these romantic wonders only do for a short time. Nothing like London when one has been absent from it upon a Syntax search after the Picturesque!" "London is indeed a charming place,"--said the Devil--"all our fraternity are very fond of it--it is the custom for the Parisians to call it dull. What an instance of the vanity of patriotism--there is vice enough in it to make any reasonable man cheerful."