EDITED BY H. A. VILES
Editor of the "Imperial Speaker.”

Preface.

offering the "Imperial Pocket Reader" to the lovers of popular fiterature, the Editor believes he is justified in saying that it will be found to contain a greater variety of Readings and Recitations, suitable for all occasions, than any other compilation hitherto offered to the public at the price of One Shilling.

As its title implies, it is well suited for the pocket, and every traveller, by water, road, or rail, will find it a cheerful companion, wherein he "may read, and read, and read again, and still find something new, something to please, and something to instruct."

No attempt has been made at classification, but rather to present a multitudinous array of interesting reading, with a regular and startling irregularity-leaving the reader as free as the birds of the air, to pick the fruit that pleases most

Thus as the bee, from bank to bower,
Assiduous sips at every flower,

But rests on none till that be found

Where most nectareous sweets abound.

Great care has been taken to exclude all pieces of a vicious character; and it is believed, that not a single line will be found to which the most scrupulous could take objection.

THE EDITOR.

A 2

The Imperial Pocket Reader.

WAR AND SLAVERY.

OH for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart-
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured like his own, and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And worse than all, and most to be deplored
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?