Page:The poetical works of Thomas Campbell.djvu/326

306 the sparrow of our clime, flying in flocks about our houses, and building their soft downy pigmy nests in the orange, peach, and lemon trees surrounding them."—Cunningham's Two Years in New South Wales, vol. ii. p. 216.

There is not upon record a more disgusting scene of Russian hypocrisy, and (woe that it must be written!) of British humiliation, than that which passed on board the Talavera, when British sailors accepted money from the Emperor Nicholas, and gave him cheers. It will require the Talavera to fight well with the first Russian ship that she may have to encounter, to make us forget that day.

In the year 1790, Oran, the most western city in the Algerine Regency, which had been possessed by Spain for more than a hundred years, and fortified at an immense expense, was destroyed by an earthquake; six thousand of its inhabitants were buried under the ruins.