Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/227

1839.] head?—where the tawdry finery purchased with the wages of her shame? The roseate hue of health has long faded from her cheek, and the expression of that once happy face is now the expression of rooted and inextricable sorrow. Perhaps her thoughts have turned to her country friends and her rural home—to that home, her desertion of which, it may be, has brought the grey hairs of her parents with sorrow to the grave—she is hungry, too; for I am long enough acquainted with this place to distinguish the physiognomy of hunger. What does she say?—half a penny roll has been her food since this time yesterday!

Gracious eternal God! could the seducers of female innocence come hither, and behold their triumph in a spectacle like this! would they not hide their guilty and guilt-creating heads from the lightning, and hear, in every thunder-peal, the judgment of an avenging God?

Humane and gentle reader, when you come this way, let the poor unfortunate have a shilling. The air will do you good, the exercise will do you good, and the charity will do you good. You will not, believe me, dine less heartily for having contributed a mite to the poor victim of profligacy, who, without your timely assistance, had not dined at all.

We are now on the parade: but there is nothing here save a parcel of lounging life-guardsmen, and a dozen or so of recruiting sergeants. The hour of guard- mounting (ten o'clock in the morning) is long past, and "all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," has marched back peacefully to its barracks on the other side of the Park. In the absence of any thing better to occupy our attention, we will turn our backs upon the parade, the great gun, and the greater mortar, together with the lounging life-guardsmen and recruiting sergeants, and indulge ourselves with a look at the ducks.

Who would have supposed that, over the way there, where you see that desolate-looking heron perched upon one leg, was once a royal government, like the island of Barataria, whereof his Excellency Don Sancho Panza was whilome governor and commander-in-chief? Nay, now, don't laugh, for the thing is a fact, and very well attested. We are informed by the accurate Mr Pennant, in his Survey of London, that "Duck Island was erected, in the time of King Charles II., into a government, and had a salary annexed to the office in favour of M., who was the first, and perhaps the last governor."

Only think of a memorial on behalf of the widgeon addressed to his Excellency, Lord- lieutenant General and General Governor of and its dependencies: or a paragraph in the London Mercury, to the effect that "his gracious Majesty Charles II., attended by the Right Honourable the Earl of Rochester, and Mr Killigrew the joker, was graciously pleased to visit, where his Majesty was received by his Excellency the Governor with the customary honours, the swans being drawn up in review order for the inspection of his Majesty, and the ducks, teal, and widgeon firing a royal salute!"

We delight in ducks. There is one little fellow in particular—black and all black, with an orange eye, and a crest like that of the peewit growing out of his occiput—who is perfectly irresistible. And that poor, ragged, attenuated old lady, with her large small family of thirteen downy ducklings—why, that poor family would eat a quartern loaf to their own cheek, and never be a whit the fuller. Pray, Mrs Duck, do you happen to be aware that there is now exhibiting in Pall Mall a steam young-duck manufactory, where all you have to do, when you want poultry, is to drop an egg into the engine, and after a few turns of the fly-wheel, out comes a delicious duckling ready for the spit, and to save trouble, stuffed beforehand with sage and onions!

We delight in ducks—young ducks especially, if associated, as young ducks should ever be, with the tenderest marrow peas, and stuffed scientifically;—but even while alive, your duck is a comical-looking rascal. There is an expression in his half-closed, wicked little eye, particularly when he winks, that stamps him a rum fellow; if he be not a humorist, then is. there no tittle of truth in physiognomy.

Fond as we are of ducks, however, we are sorry to see them here, where their presence operates to the exclusion of human beings from the Park. We