Which my name is Stoker Bill, And a pleasant berth I fill, And the care the ladies take of me is clipping; They have made me pretty snug, With a blooming Persian rug, In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping. There’s my Whistler pastels, there, As are quite beyond compare, And a portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist skipping; From such art we all expect Quite a softening effect, In the Ladies’ new Æsthetic Training Shipping. And my beer comes in a mug— Such a rare old Rhodian jug! And here I sits æsthetically sipping; And I drinks my grog or ale On a chair by Chippendale— We’ve no others in our modern training shipping. There’s our first Liftenant, too, Is a rare old (China) Blue, And you do not very often catch him tripping At a monogram or mark, But no more than Noah’s ark, Does he know the way to manage this here shipping. But the Boys? the Boys, they stands With white lilies in their hands, And they do not know the meaning of a whipping: For the whole delightful ship is Like a dream of Lippo Lippi’s, More than what you mostly see in modern shipping. Well, some coves they cuts up rough, And they calls æsthetics stuff, And they says as we’ve no business to keep dipping In the rates, but ladies likes it, And our flag we never strikes it— Bless old England’s new Æsthetic Training Shipping! NATURAL THEOLOGY. _ἐπει καὶ τοῦτον ὀῖομαι ἀθανάτοισιν_ _ἔυχεσθαι_· _Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ_’ _ἄνθρωποι_. OD. III. 47. “Once CAGN was like a father, kind and good, But He was spoiled by fighting many things; He wars upon the lions in the wood, And breaks the Thunder-bird’s tremendous wings; But still we cry to Him,—_We are thy brood_— _O Cagn_, _be merciful_! and us He brings To herds of elands, and great store of food, And in the desert opens water-springs.” So Qing, King Nqsha’s Bushman hunter, spoke, Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair, When all were weary, and soft clouds of smoke Were fading, fragrant, in the twilit air: And suddenly in each man’s heart there woke A pang, a sacred memory of prayer. THE ODYSSEY.