There had been in 1852 a contested election for the city of Dublin, and the defeated party, as is usual on such occasions, attributed their failure to the use, on the part of their adversaries, of every unfair stratagem and corrupt inducement. At the commencement of the Session of Parliament in 1853, it was rumoured that a petition would be lodged to invalidate the return, especially on the grounds of extensive bribery amongst the freemen. It was alleged that a certain alderman was the confidential treasurer of the funds appropriated for the venal voters, and that a person named BELL had been employed to procure the men and dispense the money. The alderman was one of my most intimate friends, and I frequently enjoyed his hospitality. I was also acquainted with several of the other party who were loud in their denunciations of the corruption of which Bell was alleged to have been the instrument. When I heard them speaking of the sums distributed amongst the freemen, I contented myself by affecting to lament the injustice to which I was individually subjected, that I was a freeman of my native city, and that I might have participated in the distribution to which they referred, were it not for an odious statutable enactment which prohibited a Dublin Police magistrate from exercising the franchise, and realizing its incidental advantages, whilst the English Metropolitan Magistrates were subjected to no such disqualification. One of my friends who happened to be the editor of a newspaper, remarked that I seemed disposed to treat the recent bribery with levity, and to regard it as mere fun, and I replied that he was not far wrong in his conjecture, and that I would advise him to adopt a similar course. He asked me to commit my ideas to writing and transmit them to him. I acceded to his request, and he published my communication; but I feel confident that neither publicly nor privately did he divulge the name of its author. No parliamentary petition was presented; and the bountiful treatment of the freemen was only noticed publicly in my poor production of-- THE MAGIC BELL, My retrospection of that election Accords perfection to the magic "Bell," Whose notes so soothing were felt each booth in Where freemen voted so prompt and well. That Bell so cheering, our hopes uprearing, As Green Street nearing we came to poll, With _notes_ persuasive, soft and adhesive, And touch evasive of law's control. There are joy-bells swinging, and sweetly ringing, Their blithe sounds flinging from Christ Church high And Father Yore has erected more On the Liffey's shore to the Four Courts nigh. But more sublime than their varied chime Of a festal time or a funeral knell, Was the Bell so soothing, felt every booth in Where freemen voted so prompt and well.