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148 might be adduced, as curious as any that Burnet had recourse to, when he wrote the suppressed passages of his history.—See Routh's genuine Edition, Oxf. 1823.

"Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects," cried George II. when he heard of the bravery of the Irish Catholic exiles at Fontenoy. This and a few other indications of humane feeling in that Monarch for the political degradation of the Catholics of Ireland, induced one of their bards to attempt his praise in English, as follows.—

my own King George, I'll toss off his health in a bumper at large, By the Cross of Saint Patrick he's so very civil, That the French and the Spaniards may go to the Devil.

However ludicrous this Irish attempt at English versification may appear, yet the sentiment which it endeavours to convey is one that deserves the serious attention of our rulers.

A sensible Scotch writer used to say, that if the composition of the songs of a country were left to him, he cared not who made its laws. Hence Lord Wharton boasted, that he rhymed King James out of Ireland by the old Williamite ballad Lilliburlero: and Bishop Percy noticing that song in his Reliques of ancient English poetry, (where, by the bye, within the compass of a few lines, this Christian Divine found room for the hacknied terms "furious papist, bigotted master, violence of his administration," &c.) quotes his brother prelate. Bishop King, to shew that it "contributed not a little to the great revolution of 1688!" The effects, real or fancied, thus