THE BUTCHER AND HIS PLUM.

WHE

HEN valour weds beauty, and beauty has gold,
Whether house-rents or mortgage or acres untold,
You may hear Damon say of his Benedict chum,
'Lucky boy, he has married a regular plum.'
A phrase which implies an indefinite sum
In cash or in shares,

In Consols or wares,

Or, in fine, any shape in which money can come.
Gentle readers, then list and patiently wait
While the tragical tale of a plum I relate;
But a plum which I ought in initio to state
Is not, in a sense the remotest, allied
With festal of Hymen or dower of a bride.
The subject you'll gather at once, I engage,

When you glance at the picture over the page :

These outline engravings effective are reckoned—

That is, when they're limned by George Cruikshank the Second.

Tableau the first. To a marvellous size

The plum has swelled, is swelling,
And a thousand eyes with delight, surprise,

On that plum and its growth are dwelling.
And Carnifex there, with contemptuous air,
Watches the crowds as they swift repair,
Old and young, wise, witty, and fair,

From mansions Belgravian and West End Square;
Maids and dowagers stricken in age,

Saint and soldier, poet and sage,

See, how awe-smitten they raise their brows and
Say, 'Why, 'tis now worth forty thousand!'

Tableau the second. The conqueror comes,
Sound the trumpets and beat the drums!
Bow and adore it, the plum of plums!
As for King Butcher, behold him there,
Lolling at ease in triumphal chair,
Sleek, languid, and resupinum,
Postured to say

That is in the way

Which the satirist, born at Aquinum,
Declared was odious quite to view

When beheld in a social parvenu.

And the crowds which gazed now draw him along

With voice of music and note of song.

'Way, make way, a divinity comes,

Butcher of butchers, and plum of plums!'

Hark, let the echoing cheer go round

'Tis grown to four hundred thousand pound!

Tableau the third. King Carnifex see, as
Horace said of Augustus, pra'sentior Deus,
A social divinity loftily shrined,

Flowery chaplets round him twined.
He has the great world under his thumb-
Sign of his empire the plum, the plum !

Moloch, or Baal, or Juggernaut, he
Neither knows nor cares what the title be,
A soulless, stolid divinity,

The base of his godhead, L. S. D.;
For the plum, be it known,
Already has grown,

By a process strange and stilly, on,
Till swelling in girth,

It has reached the worth

Of sovereigns just forty million!

But what is the sequel? see tableau the last;

Like a dream it has come, like a dream it has passed;
The power and the pomp, the worship, the pride,

These grew with the plum, with the plum they have died;
For lulled by the flattering incense of praise

In the zenith rare of those aureous days,

In slumbers oblivious insensibly wrapt,
Like Homer, poor butcher, he carelessly napt.
Alas! our fat friend

A tragical end

On awakening found from the sinister snooze,
To see in full flight

Through the plains of light,

Of his fawners and flatt'rers the parasite crews,
Sail swiftly away, and-the worst is to come-
Bearing with them the precious inside of the plum,
They had left as to mock him, the shrivelled old skin,
But never a morsel of what was therein.

And, unhallowed shapes,

Imps, demons, and apes,

He saw grinning at him above and around :
And the gorgeous array

Which he wore yesterday

Lay a chaos of moth-eaten rags on the ground;
And where garlands of roses had once decked him, now
'Twas a conical fool's cap surmounted his brow.

MORAL.

A moral there is, which I think itself states

Pretty plainly throughout this whole series of plates,
For to me appears that in mode allegorical

Our artist alludes to some facts most historical;

The moral, I think, is as much as to say,

If the prices which butchers compel us to pay
Make the latter grow rich, there will come a day
When co-operation-

Financial salvation

The tables completely turned round shall display,
So therefore, King Butcher, be wise while you may !

T. H. S. ESCOTT.