She chatted and sang to Love no more,

Lest music and chat should

66
prove a bore;
But she hung on his steps wherever he went,
And shut from the chamber the rose's scent.
She slept not a wink, for fear he should think
She dream'd not of Love-so her eyes grew dim;
She took no care of her beautiful hair,

For she could not spare one moment from him.

Love's bright fireside grew dark with doubt,
Yet home was a desert if Love went out;
In vain were his vows, caresses, and sighs;
"O Love," cried the lady, "I've given you eyes!
And ah! should some face of a livelier grace

Than mine ever meet them! Ah! should you stray !"
Love, wearied at last, was in slumber lock'd fast ;-
"Those wings!" said the watcher, "he might fly away.'

One awful moment! Oh! could she sever
Those wings from Love, he is hers for ever!
With trembling hand she gathers the wings—
She clips-they are off! and up Love springs.
“Adieu!” he cried, as he leapt from her side,

"Of folly's cup you have drunk the dregs;
My home was here; it is now with the deer;
Thank Venus, though wingless, Love has legs!

L. B.

BERNARD CAVANAGH,

THE IRISH CAMELEON.

Bernard Cavanagh is the name of a person who is now raising considerable sums of money in Dublin by professing to work miracles-the greatest of them all consisting in his ability to live without any food whatever-which he is now said to have done for several months. Crowds flock to him to be cured of their lameness, deafness, &c.-Irish Papers.

MARVELLOUS Erin! when St. Patrick's feat

Thy hills, vales, plains, and bogs from reptiles freed,
He little dream'd what monsters would succeed;

Sinners who drink not, saints who never eat!
And is there one, in whom the piece of meat
Which Paris raves about, no care can breed!
One who can never know a time of need,
Though corn be trampled by the tempest's feet!

Poor fellow! what enjoyment he foregoes!
Nothing but air, a scrap of summer cloud,
Fog with the chill off, is to him allow'd;

A fine thick mist, or rainbow when it shows;

But ah! for him no kitchen's steam up-flows;
No knives, forks, spoons, or plates, a pilèd crowd,
No dishes, glasses, salts, make music loud!
Sad sinecurists all-mouth, ears, and nose!

THE ASS ON THE LADDER.

"For lowliness is young Ambition's ladder."-Julius Cæsar.

At the end of the second volume of a Hebrew MS of the Bible, written on beautiful vellum, is the following passage, in fine large Hebrew characters :-" I, Meyer, the son of Rabbi Jacob, the scribe, have finished this book for Rabbi Abraham, the son of Rabbi Nathan, the 5052nd year (A.D. 1292); and he has bequeathed it to his children and his children's children for ever. Amen. Ámen. Amen. Selah. Be strong and strengthened. May this book not be After which the damaged, neither this day nor for ever, until the ass ascends the LADDER.' accompanying rude figure is drawn.-Pettigrew's Bibliotheca Sussexiana, part I. vol. i.

Ir would appear from the curious sentence copied above, that no longer ago tha five centuries and a half, the feat which is pictured to the spectator in a fac-simile of the original drawing was regarded as an event of extremely improbable occurrence. The inference indeed may be, that

was deemed an impossibility. The prayer of the inscription is, "May this book be undamaged for ever." - May it be preserved "until the ass ascends the ladder!"

"Till Birnam wood shall come to Dun-
sinane," is the unlikely occurrence which
the weird sisters specify as the omen of
Macbeth's fall; and "That will never be!"
is the cry of the confident thane. In
In
modern days we wish a man "good luck
till he's tired of it;" or "prosperity till
the sky falls." The despairing and love-
lorn damsel in the ditty sings-

"When fishes fly, and swallows dive,
Young men they will prove true."

And one of the same ballad-family sets out with the affecting declaration, that

"When gooseberries grow on the stem of a daisy," the singer's passion will be no more. These, and a thousand examples of the "Not till then," are but versions of the Hebrew assumption of impossibility, expressed in the grotesque fancy of "the ass on the ladder." But it is clear that Meyer the son of Rabbi Jacob was not in Moorfields last year; it is certain that Abraham, the son of Rabbi Nathan, little dreamed of what would be doing at Pimlico in the nineteenth century; for whether at Mayfair or at Bethnal Green, at Wapping or at Islington, one or both must have seen the impossibility realised, in the elevation of the donkey, before the upturned wondering eyes of a crowd of lingering mortals in the public thoroughfares.

Lest there should be some who never saw the modern street-mountebank, going forth like Leporello with his ladder, and like Sancho with his donkey, we must describe his performance. His greatest feat consisted in balancing upon his chin a ladder with an ass on it. All other tricks performed, and all eyes and mouths opened, curiosity on tiptoe and incredulity on the stretch, forth came the wooden machine, and with legs twisted through the staves, up went the animal. "Who," exclaims the minstrel, "Ah who can tell how hard it is to climb!" But what poet ever found a steep so difficult as that gradus ad Parnassum to the seemingly dislocated donkey? To the topmast round, you would see him clinging like Shakspeare's giddy sea-boy on the mast; and surveying the mountebank who had taught him to be such an astonishing ass, with a look that seemed to say, "You're another!" Then would his master send round the hat upon its last and greatest voyage of discovery; then would the halfpence therein be rated harmlessly in the vacant faces of boys with vacant pockets, and then would the irresistible appeal be heard, "Come, good gen'lemen, be liberal, be liberal-tuppence more, and up goes the donkey." Then bending up each corporal agent for the terrible feat, up indeed would go the ladder, donkey and all; high up in air, until its lowest stave rested fairly and firmly on the protruded chin of the mountebank, where it stood poised, fixed, moveless-the astonishing type, or rather the exact model, of the balance of power in Europe.

The amazement now should be transferred from the balanced to the balancer; for what is the difficulty of such a gradus ad Parnassum to the ass, compared with the sore trial of the man below, who has made the bridge of his nose a pons asinorum! But in rivalship with the donkey, the human being shrinks into insignificance; the grotesque patience of the brute beats the strength and dexterity of the man hollow; the gazers are all wrapped in ecstasy to see how the ass hangs on, not how the cunning mountebank balances him. The sympathies of the crowd, men and boys, are triumphantly borne off by the four-legged performer, and every one of them goes away more convinced of the uncommon cleverness of the ass, and consequently on better terms with himself.

But the obstinacy of the long-eared animal is proverbial; and in nothing is it more strikingly exhibited than in the fact that he will eat if he can. So was it before the days of Esop's ass, that cropped a thistle and was

torn in pieces for confessing it; and so has it been before and since the hour when Sterne's ass consumed the macaroon which curiosity and not charity presented to him. It is possibly this expensive habit that has led the mountebank, of late, to cast off the donkey, and to substitute a boy for him, in the feat of the ladder. The performance to this hour is the same, with that exception-a two-legged juvenile for a four. Perhaps the mountebank was jealous of the ass! Can we assume that, in the nature of a mountebank balancing on his chin a ladder surmounted by a longeared brute, there is no room for vanity? Can we imagine a donkeybalancer incapable of feeling annoyed, when he sees his subordinate the agent through whom his own abilities are to be demonstrated-creating peals of laughter by doing nothing, trotting off with the spoils he did not win, and cropping every thistle of fame that belongs to another? There is no mind too shallow for vanity to take root in, no talent too small for it to twine itself round, no competitor too contemptible to pique and wound it. “Why, Edmund Kean couldn't get a hand of applause, with such a noisy brute as that in the piece!" said an actor in the drama of the Dog of Montargis, when the quadruped was howling over the murdered body of his master, and breaking the hearts of the audience.

can all

ist

At all events the Boy has taken the Ass's place on the ladder. The change may have arisen out of that tenderness for the brute creation which is too amiable a feelingwhen in excess-to pass unadmired. There is a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and to risk a donkey's life on a ladder, for the sport of a heedless crowd, might be dangerous to the mountebank. In this age, society at large knows what is due to donkeys; we enter into their feelings. But as there is no law, and no moral principle, against the elevation of a human urchin, even to the top stave of the ladder, there is no reason why the sport should not continue. Philosophers will explain to you, that a boy is a free agent, and has a right to be balanced on a human chin, if he likes; donkey has no will of his own at all-exceptexcept when you've hired him for an hour, at Ramsgate, and are endeavouring to persuade yourself that you're trotting him out of the

town.

7

but a

G

TW

The last boy we saw balanced was worthy of the chin that sustained him. The mountebank to be sure was a miracle, and could have balanced anything. If the books of the Bank of England were to get into disorder, every sum confused, and every figure out of its place-he could balance them. But the boy was at least two miracles rolled into one-a more than Siamese prodigy-a boy, and yet an ass too. He looked more like one than the reality, his predecessor. He evidently felt the