"On Saturday last, the Town-green pond at Dunfermline teemed with _toads_, and, apparently, under extraordinary excitation. A number of boys stood looking on intensely for some time, when one of them exclaimed, 'It's the House of Lords debatin' the Reform Bill.' In an instant, 'Demolish,' was the universal and simultaneous cry. Caps and bonnets were filled with stones. 'Now for Wellington!' 'Here's at you, Londonderry!' 'Take that, Buckingham!' 'The bishops, the bishops!' shouted a little urchin. The 'hurra' became universal, and terrible was the work of death. The above incident 'points a moral,' if it does not 'adorn a tale.'" Anent the creation of new peers, there is an amusing skit in verse. "FROM THE HON. HENRY ---- TO LADY EMMA ----. "Paris, _March 30_. "You bid me explain, my dear angry Ma'amselle, How I came thus to bolt, without saying farewell; And the truth is,--as truth you _will_ have, my sweet railer,-- There are two worthy persons I always feel loth To take leave of at starting, my mistress and tailor,-- As, somehow, one always has _scenes_ with them both: The Snip in ill-humour, the Syren in tears, She calling on Heaven, and he on th' attorney,-- Till, sometimes, in short, 'twixt his duns and his dears, A young gentleman risks being stopp'd on his journey. "But to come to the point:--though you think, I dare say That 'tis debtor or Cholera drives me away, 'Pon honour you're wrong; such a mere bagatelle As a pestilence, nobody, nowadays, fears; The fact is, my love, I'm thus bolting, pell-mell, To get out of the way of these horrid new Peers; This deluge of coronets, frightful to think of, Which England is now, for her sins, on the brink of;-- This coinage of _nobles_, coined, all of them, badly, And sure to bring counts to a _dis_count most sadly. "Only think, to have Lords overrunning the nation, As plenty as frogs in a Dutch inundation; No shelter from Barons, from Earls no protection, And tadpole young Lords, too, in every direction,-- Things created in haste, just to make a Court list of, Two legs and a coronet, all they consist of! The prospect's quite frightful, and what Sir George R--e (My particular friend) says, is perfectly true, That so dire the alternative, nobody knows, 'Twixt the Peers and the Pestilence, what he's to do; And Sir George even doubts,--could he choose his disorder,-- 'Twixt coffin and coronet, _which_ he would order."