THE LORD MAYOR AMONG THE SWANS.
THE Lord Mayor has this week been " swan-hopping " with a party of his friends. This is an act of penance which every Lord Major is bound to perform once in the course of his Mayoralty ; and, to make its expiatory influence more efficacious, all his friends are expected to perform it along with him. The party embark at an early hour in the Maria Wood, to sail up the Thames as far as Twickenham. The .Maria Wood is constructed to draw exactly so much water as will facilitate her running aground at short intervals, without, however, rendering her passage upwards utterly impossible and affording the "swan- hoppers" an excuse for abandoning the enterprise. She contrives to get fixed for an hour or half an hour right under every lime- work, brick-kiln, gas-manufactory, and other nuisance, on the river-side. The luckless inmates of the barge during- each stop- page pace the deck in dismal silence, like the despairing crew in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Or they attempt to converse ; with faint smiles declaring, like Christophero Sly, that the trip is "an excellent good piece of work," adding like him, with a sigh, "would it were over 1" At a late hour they reach Twickenham, dull, listless' and dispirited ; and, after partaking of a hasty re- past, betake themselves to their carriages,—for no mortal courage could risk the downward voyage in the same four-and-twenty hours. Strange, that men are to be found who, aware that the " swan-hopping " must be undergone, yet venture on the office of Lord Mayor! That the present incumbent should rush upon the penance with his eyes open, is intelligible : he hopes that it may be accepted as atonement for his sins in Walbrook. He has read in the Duneiad of Aaron Hill, +who plunged into the sable streams of Fleet Ditch, yet emerged cleansed from all stain, "-far off amid the swans of Thames," and believes that swan- hopping may purify him also. But Rector Croly and all the Ve. slay of Walbrook maintain that the experiment has failed, We as much as the fabulous attempt to wash a Blackamoor 'se; and that his Lordship, received into the fellowship of the mien of. Twickenham, is still rarissinia avis—a black swan.
Previous page
