The charges of building a ship of the first rate, together with guns, tackle, and rigging (besides victualling), doth ordinarily amount to about 62,432l.  Those of lower rates proportionably.—­Angliae Notitia.

G.K.

* * * * *

OLD POETS.

* * * * *

CHILDREN.

  Riches of children pass a prince’s throne
  Which touch the father’s heart with secret joy,
  When without shame he saith, “These be mine own.”

  SIR P. SIDNEY

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FAME.

  Then came they to the foul and loathsome lake. 
  Dark, deep, and miry, of a dreadful hue,
  Where was the aged man that never stinted
  To carry bundles of the names imprinted. 
  This was the man, whom (as I told before)
  Nature and custom so swift of foot had made,
  He never rested, but ran evermore. 
  And with his coming he did use his trade;
  A heap of names within his cloak he bare,
  And in the river did them all unlade;
  Or, to say truth, away he cast them all
  Into this stream, which Lethe we do call. 
  This prodigal old wretch no sooner came
  Unto this cursed river’s barren bank,
  But desperately, without all fear of blame,
  Or caring to deserve reward or thank,
  He hurl’d therein full many a precious name
  Where millions soon unto the bottom sank: 
  Hardly in every thousand one was found
  That was not in the gulf quite lost and drown’d;
  Yet all about great store of birds there flew,
  As vultures, carrion crows, and chattering pies,
  And many more of sundry kinds and hue,
  Making lewd harmony with their loud cries: 
  These, when the careless wretch the treasure threw
  Into the stream, did all they could devise,
  What with their talons some, and some with beak,
  To save these names, but found themselves too weak. 
  For ever as they thought themselves to raise,
  To bear away those names of good renown,
  The weight of them so heavy downward weighs,
  They in the stream were driven to cast them down,
  Only two swans sustained so great a prize,
  In spite of him who sought them all to drown: 
  These two did still take up whose names they list,
  And bare them safe away, and never miss’d. 
  Sometime all under the foul lake they dived,
  And took up some that were with water cover’d,
  And those that seem’d condemned they reprived. 
  And often as about the bank they hovered,
  They caught them, ere they to the stream arrived,
  Then went they with the names they had recovered,
  Up to a hill that stood the water nigh,
  On which a stately church was built on high. 
  This place is sacred to immortal fame,