Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/74

 specimens as I go on, and shall intermix them with political epigrams; but as to any formal political essay I fear I am not equal to do it at all."

Some of the epigrams were pleasant specimens of what his friends in after life came to call Manganesque. For example:—

Or this—

I wrote a few ballads which I still smile or blush to encounter in collections of national verse, and T. M. Hughes did much better. Here is one of his rude, vigorous songs which glows with all the fervour that a little later inspired the "Spirit of the Nation":—