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Hide your diminished heads, ye sage Reviewers!
Thank Heaven, the day is o’er with you and yours;
No longer at your shrines will Genius bow,
For mayors and aldermen are critics now.
Alike to them the Crichtons of their age,
The painter’s canvas, and the poet’s page,
From high to low, from law to verse they stoop,
Judges of Sessions, Science, Arts, and Soup.

Time was, when Dr. Mitchill’s word was law,
When monkeys, monsters, whales, and Esquimaux,
Asked but a letter from his ready hand,
To be the theme and wonder of the land.
That time is past,—henceforth each showman’s doom
Must be decided in the Council Room;
And there the city’s guardians will decree
An artist’s or an author’s destiny,
Pronounce the fate of poem, song, or sonnet,
And shape the fashion of a lady’s bonnet;
Gravely determine when, and how, and where,
Bristed shall write, and Saunders shall cut hair,
’Till even the very buttons of a coat
Be settled, like assessment laws, by vote.

H.