TIME was, I sat upon a lofty stool, At lofty desk, and with a clerkly pen Began each morning, at the stroke of ten, To write in Bell and Co.’s commercial school; In Warnford Court, a shady nook and cool, The favourite retreat of merchant men; Yet would my quill turn vagrant even then, And take stray dips in the Castalian pool. Now double entry--now a flowery trope-- Mingling poetic honey with trade wax-- Blogg, Brothers--Milton--Grote and Prescott--Pope-- Bristles--and Hogg--Glyn Mills and Halifax-- Rogers--and Towgood--Hemp--the Bard of Hope-- Barilla--Byron--Tallow--Burns--and Flax! MY commercial career was a brief one, and deserved only a sonnet in commemoration. The fault, however, lay not with the muses. To commit poetry indeed is a crime ranking next to forgery in the counting-house code; and an Ode or a song dated Copthall Court, would be as certainly noted and protested as a dishonoured bill. I have even heard of an unfortunate clerk, who lost his situation through being tempted by the jingle to subscribe under an account current “Excepted all errors Made by John Ferrers,” his employer emphatically declaring that Poetry and Logwood could never coexist in the same head. The principal of _our_ firm on the contrary had a turn for the Belles Lettres, and would have winked with both eyes at verses which did not intrude into an invoice or confuse their figures with those of the Ledger. The true cause of my retirement from Commercial affairs was more prosaic. My constitution, though far from venerable, had begun to show symptoms of decay: my appetite failed, and its principal creditor, the stomach, received only an ounce in the pound. My spirits daily became a shade lower--my flesh was held less and less firmly--in short, in the language of the price current, it was expected that I must “submit to a decline.” The Doctors who were called in, declared imperatively that a mercantile life would be the death of me--that by so much sitting, I was hatching a whole brood of complaints, and that no Physician would insure me as a merchantman from the Port of London to the next Spring. The Exchange, they said, was against me, and as the Exchange itself used to ring with “Life let us Cherish,” there was no resisting the advice. I was ordered to abstain from Ashes, Bristles, and Petersburg yellow candle, and to indulge in a more generous diet--to take regular country exercise instead of the Russia Walk, and to go to bed early even on Foreign Post nights. Above all I was recommended change of air, and in particular the bracing breezes of the North. Accordingly I was soon shipped as per advice, in a Scotch Smack, which “_smacked_ through the breeze,” as Dibdin sings so merrily, that on the fourth morning we were in sight of the prominent old Steeple of “Bonny Dundee.”