[Illustration: THE TOP OF HIS PROFESSION.] SONNET TO A DECAYED SEAMAN. HAIL! seventy-four cut down! Hail, Top and Lop! Unless I’m much mistaken in my notion, Thou wast a stirring Tar, before that hop Became so fatal to thy locomotion;-- Now, thrown on shore, like a mere weed of ocean, Thou readest still to men a lesson good, To King and Country showing thy devotion, By kneeling thus upon a stump of wood! Still is thy spirit strong as alcohol; Spite of that limb, begot of acorn-egg,-- Methinks,--thou Naval History in one Vol.-- A virtue shines, e’en in that timber leg, For unlike others that desert their Poll, Thou walkest ever with thy “Constant Peg!” THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION. _Dreadful Fire--Destruction of both Houses of Parliament--The Speaker’s House gutted--Reports of Incendiarism._ IT is our unexpected lot to announce that the Houses of Lords and Commons, so often threatened with combustion, are in a state of actual ignition. At this moment, both fabrics are furiously burning. We are writing this paragraph without the aid of lamp or candles; by the mere reflection of the flames. Nothing is known of the origin of the fire, although it is throwing a light upon everything else.--_Evening Star._ The devouring element which destroyed Covent Garden and Drury Lane, the Royalty and the Pantheon, has made its appearance on a new stage, equally devoted to declamatory elocution. St. Stephen’s Chapel is in flames! The floor which was trodden by the eloquent legs of a Fox, a Burke, a Pitt, and a Sheridan, is reduced to a heap of ashes; and the benches which sustained the Demosthenic weight of a Wyndham, a Whitbread, and a Wilberforce, are a mere mass of charcoal. The very roof that re-echoed the classicalities of Canning is nodding to its fall. In Parliamentary language, Fire is in possession of the House: the Destructive spirit is on its legs, and the Conservative principle can offer but a feeble opposition.--_Daily Post._ The blow is struck. What we have long foreseen has come to pass. Incendiarism triumphs! The whole British Empire, as represented by the three estates, is in a blaze! The Throne, the Lords, and the Commons, are now burning. The cycle is complete. The spirit of Guy Fawkes revives in 1834!