If the printed works of my Censor had not prepared me for any misapplication of _types_, I should have been surprised by this misapprehension of one of the commonest emblems. In some cases the dove unquestionably stands for the Divine Spirit; but the same bird is also a lay representative of the peace of this world, and, as such, has figured time out of mind in allegorical pictures. The sense in which it was used by me is plain from the context; at least, it would be plain to any one but a fisher for faults, predisposed to carp at some things, to dab at others, and to flounder in all. But I am possibly in error. It is the female swine, perhaps, that is profaned in the eyes of the Oriental tourist. Men find strange ways of marking their intolerance; and the spirit is certainly strong enough, in Mr. W.'s works, to set up a creature as sacred, in sheer opposition to the Mussulman, with whom she is a beast of abomination. It would only be going the whole sow.--I am, dear Sir, yours very truly, THOS. HOOD. "Close, close your eyes with holy dread, And weave a circle round him thrice, For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise."--COLERIDGE. "It's very hard them kind of men Won't let a body be."--_Old Ballad_. A wanderer, Wilson, from my native land, Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee, Where rolls between us the eternal sea, Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand,-- Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall; Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call; Across the wavy waste between us stretch'd, A friendly missive warns me of a stricture, Wherein my likeness you have darkly etch'd, And though I have not seen the shadow sketch'd, Thus I remark prophetic on the picture. I guess the features:--in a line to paint Their moral ugliness, I'm not a saint. Not one of those self-constituted saints, Quacks--not physicians--in the cure of souls, Censors who sniff out mortal taints, And call the devil over his own coals-- Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God, Who write down judgments with a pen hard-nibb'd; Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod, Commending sinners, not to ice thick-ribb'd, But endless flames, to scorch them up like flax-- Yet sure of heav'n themselves, as if they'd cribb'd Th' impression of St. Peter's keys in wax! Of such a character no single trace Exists, I know, in my fictitious face; There wants a certain cast about the eye; A certain lifting of the nose's tip; A certain curling of the nether lip, In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky; In brief it is an aspect deleterious, A face decidedly not serious, A face profane, that would not do at all To make a face at Exeter Hall,-- That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray, And laud each other face to face, Till ev'ry farthing-candle _ray_ Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace.