Note 58 — DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY.

The following unpublished lines, by Miss M. Tylden, the most talented young lady I ever met, depict the frivolity and short-lived nature of human vanities more forcibly than a hundred sermons—if we calmly reflect what a contemptible animal is man!—

“The kingdoms of the world have pass’d away,

And its strong empires moulder’d into dust,

Swift as the changes of a poet’s dream;

And kings and heroes, and the mighty minds

Whose hopes circled eternity, and seized

The stars as their inheritance, and grew

Too big for mortal frames—until they sank

Into the narrow bounds of nature:—

These are the things which, even nameless now,

Are on the earth forgot—or, if retain’d,

Of power, of life, and motion all bereft!”