The Table Talker Author:Johnstone Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: picturesque and almost cheerful beauty. Here are the lines :— Within a dreary glen, Where scatter'cl lay the bones of men, In some forgotten battle sla... more »in, And bleach'd by drifting wind and rain. It might have tamed a warrior's heart To view such mockery of his art! The knot-grass fetter'd there the hand Which once could burst an iron band; Beneath the broad and ample bone, That buckler'd heart to fear unknown. A feeble and a tim'rous guest, The fieldfare, framed her lowly nest And there too lay the leader's skull, Still wreathed with chaplet flush'd and full, For heath-bell, with her purple bloom, Supplied the bonnet and the plume." RICH AND POOR. It is a pitiable thing, how many of the men of wealth hi England are, from the circumstances of their lives, shut out from all the noblest enjoyments which await on wealth when well employed. These men are so constantly employed in accumulation, and in that sphere of great abundance wherein great accumulation is carried on, that they know not, and cannot know experimentally, what miserable wretchedness there is which they might easily remove —what breaking hearts there are, and famishing bodies, that might be relieved by a verylittle of that wealth which they possess in such huge and needless abundance— Take physic, pomp, Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just." But these men of great wealth may be what Southey calls " the reservoirs whence public charity still keeps her channels full." Very well; but hear the admirable answer from the same author :— Now, Sir, you touch Upon the point. This man of half a million Had all those public virtues which you praise ; But the poor man rung never ...« less