"CONFOUND this gout!" pettishly exclaimed Mr. Walton, as he rose from his solitary dinner. Now, Mr. Walton was a bon vivant, a humourist of the first fashion, a tale-writer (it must be owned) of the first talent, and one whose society was so constantly courted, in all dinner-giving and literary circles, that a lonely meal was a most unusual and unpleasant occurrence to him.

<< Well," continued he, "I must, per force, content myself with another day of sofa and Quarterly;" for Mr. Walton ranked among the most devoted adherents to the Quarterly creed of politics.

Scarcely had he uttered these words, in a tone half peevish and half resigned, when a servant handed him a letter, bearing an official seal of stupendous dimensions, and marked, in the corner," private and confidential.”

Walton eagerly opened the envelope, and, to his no small dismay, learned that the great man on whose smiles he lived, and to whose fortunes and party he was attached, (by a snug place,) required immediate information on subjects connected with our naval establishments, into the expenditure of which, the great political economist, on the opposite side of the house, intended to make certain inquiries in the course of a night or two. Mr. Walton was requested, not to say commanded, to see the commissioner at Portsmouth as speedily as possible, to investigate facts, and to report progress on his return. It was at the same time delicately hinted, that the expenses of this important mission, would be defrayed by the writer from that convenient and ever-open source, the public purse.

"A journey of seventy-two miles, when I'd resolved upon quiet: but in the service of one's country, when it costs one nothing! Well, I must forget the gout, or lose my Hang

it! I can't call on the commissioner in list slippers. Travers! step up to Hoby's, and tell him to send me a pair of boots, somewhat larger than my usual fit; and take a place in the Portsmouth coach for to-morrow morning;-'tis too late to night for the mail-but d'ye hear? not in my name, as I travel incog."

Walton made the few arrangements for so short an absence from town, retired earlier than usual to bed, was horrified at the imperative necessity of rising before the sun, found himself booked by his literal servant as "Mr. Incog," had the coach to himself, and, at six o'clock in the evening, alighted at the George, in High-street.

Travelling without a servant, and with so scanty an allowance of baggage, he was ushered into the coffee-room, of which he found himself the sole occupant, asked for the bill of fare, and was served with the usual delicacies of a coffee

room dinner; cold soup, stale fish, oiled butter, rancid anchovy, flabby veal-cutlet, with mildewed mushroom sauce. Cape and brandy, doing duty for sherry, and a genuine bottle of Southampton port, so well known by the seducing appellation of " Black-strap." All these luxuries were brought him by a lout of a boy, who looked more lik a helper than a waiter.

"Well," thought Walton," the sooner I complete my mission the better. I could not bear this sort of thing long. How far is it to the dockyard, waiter?"

"I don't know; master can tell'e; it's no use going there now, the gates be shut."

"But I wish to see Sir Henry Grayhurst, the commissioner."

"He be gone to the Isle of Wight, with his family, so I heerd master say."

"Is he expected back soon?"

Lord, Sir, how can I tell? if you ask master, he do know."

"Pleasant and intelligent youth!” sighed Walton, "I'll put him into my next sketch. Well, I've had the bore of this day's journey for nothing, since the man I came to see is absent, as if on purpose to oblige me. How extremely agreeable! I must ask master' then. Tell the landlord I want him."

"Master and missus be gone to the play; it's old Kelly's benefit, and they do go every year." "The play! there's comfort in the name; any thing is preferable to this lonely, gloomy coffeeroom. Send the chambermaid to me.

An old woman, with a flat tin candle stick, led the way to a small inconvenient room up numerous flights of stairs, not evincing the slightest sympathy with the limp of our traveller, who, by the way, had nearly forgotten his gout in his annoyances. She assured him that all the best rooms were engaged.

What soothers of irritated feelings are soap and water! Walton washed his handsome face, and aristocratic hands, (novelist-ink had not spoiled them,) got rid of his dusty travelling suit, put on a capacious king's-stock with flowing black drapery, and a well-regulated and wellbraided Stulz. His ready-made Hoby's he consigned to "boots," having assumed the bas de soie and easy pumps. Leaving word that he should require something for supper, he bent his steps to the theatre.

The acting was sufficiently bad to amuse him, and at a moment when the attention of the audience was directed to the closing scene of the tragedy, and the ladies of the Point were weeping at the distress of the lady in point, the door of an opposite box was opened by the identical lout who had waited on him at dinner. The lad,

making his way through a box full of over-dressed and vulgar-looking people, whispered to a man in a blue coat and powdered head, singling out Walton, as though he was the subject of this unexpected communication. The landlord of the George," for it was no less a personage, started up, and instantly left the house, accompanied by the females of his party.

When the curtain fell, a whisper spread from box to box, and during the farce Walton could not help perceiving that he had become a greater attraction in the eyes of the audience than the performers were.

"What the devil does all this mean?" thought he; "have they found out what I am? Perhaps they never saw a live author before. Let them stare. If they like to make a lion of me, I'll humour the joke."

On rising to leave the house, Walton found that the door was thronged with people, who, as he approached, respectfully made way for him, and he overheard sundry sotto voce remarks as he passed-"That's he."-" Arrived this evening." Incog."-" Staying at the George!"

Wondering at the extraordinary interest he had excited, congratulating himself on an evidence of fame that Sir Walter himself might have envied, and, followed by a crowd, he reached the inn. Three or four spruce waiters in their full dress, received him at the gateway, with most obsequious homage. The landlord, (his hair re-powdered for the occasion,) carrying a silver branch of four wax lights, stepped up to him with a low bow.

"This way, an' please your Supper is ready for your

this way.

Walton, indulging his love of comic adventure, followed his guide with a dignified air into the drawing-room. The splendid chandelier threw a flood of light over a table, covered" with every delicacy of the season." His host lamented that the champaigne had not been longer in ice, and was distrest at having been absent from home when his illustrious guest arrived. Waiters flew about anticipating the asking eye, and, as Mrs. Malaprop would say, "all was alacrity and adulation." Walton could not help contrasting the indifference which he encountered at his afternoon meal with the courtesy which graced his evening repast. He made ample amends to his insulted appetite, and regretted that he had no friend to partake in the joke, for he began to find these mysterious attentions too vast for even his literary vanity to swallow. Remembering the purport of his visit, he inquired how soon the commissioner was expected to return.

"Sir Henry came back this evening, may it please-"

"I must see him to-morrow early: take care I am called at eight."

"A carriage shall be in attendance, your-" "No, no; my visit is of a private nature." “I understand, so please—and will caution my servants.'

Walton, after having discussed some well-made biskop, and a segar or two, rang for a night can

dle. The attentive landlord, like Monk Lewis's beautiful spirit, still bearing the silver branch, led the way to the best bed-room. Walton thought of the loftily-situated apartment first allotted to him, and smiled. Dismissing his officious attendant, he retired to rest.

The next morning, somewhat tired by the parade of the past night, he breakfasted in his bed room, and was preparing for his visit to the dockyard, when his persevering host entered, beseeching the honour of showing him the way. His offer was accepted; and, finding that the champaigne had renewed his gouty symptoms, Walton took advantage of his companion's supporting arm. The good man appeared overwhelmed with this condescension, and looked unutterable things, at the various acquaintance he encountered in his way. At the dock gate, Walton left his delighted cicerone, who intimated his ambition to remain there, to have the supreme felicity of showing him the way back.

Some hours rolled away, during which our traveller received the information he had sought, which appeared of so much import to the Right Honourable on whose behalf he had made

the inquiry, that he determined on leaving Portsmouth instantly. A footman of the commissioner's was despatched for a chaise and four, with directions that the bill should be brought at the same time. Down rattled the chaise, and down came waiters, chambermaids, boots, and all “the militia of the inn," to the dock-yard! Walton, without looking at items, put the amount into the hands of his gratified host, distributed his favours liberally to the domestics, threw a crown-piece at the head of the lout, and stepped into his chaise, amidst huzzas from the many idlers who had joined the Georgians.

"Long life to the Grand ." were the only words the noise of the wheels permitted him to hear.

He reached London, without any farther adventure, in as short a time as four horses could get over the ground. Arrived at his home, he instantly forwarded the essential documents to his patron; and, having disburthened himself of the more weighty affair, fell into a series of conjectures, as to the possible motives for the reverential deference he had met with. Tired with conflicting speculations, between his fond wishes to attribute it all to his literary reputation, and his secret fears that the homage was somewhat too profound, even for a literateur of his eminence to reckon upon, he kicked off his boots! Certain characters on the morocco lining attracted his attention. In a moment the mystery was solved. On decyphering them, he discovered no less a title than that of

"THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS!" for whom the Hoby's had been originally designed-for whom they had proved either too large or too small; and for whom also our literary diplomatist had been mistaken, from the moment that he consigned them to the polishing hands of the wise waiter at the George!

“Fairly hooked,” muttered Walton, as he went grumbling up to bed, and hoping the newspapers on the other side might never get hold of the story.

THE DEAD.

How few there are, as has been remarked by a forcible and impressive writer, who read the ordinary list of deaths, who know any thing of the depth of human feeling, or the intensity of human suffering, which is recorded in the simple and brief notices which we read with so much carelessness, and so coldly in the newspapers.Finding no familiar name to arrest attention, or awaken sympathy, we think no more of the matter, for what care we for the long midnight vigils of watchful, affectionate friendship-the weary aching head-the afflicted, desponding heart-we do not feel the pain the languishing sufferer has experienced, and we know nothing of the agony which exhausted his frame and wore out his weary nature; nor care we for the spirit which has fled its frail tenement, and uttered its last, final, grasping farewell. We know nothing of the heart breaking anguish which is felt, or the hot burning tears which gush out in the agony of severed friendship, from bosoms swollen and burst ing with an excess of passionate grief. We know nothing of the bitterness of parting, of the strength of affections which have been torn asunder-of the hopelessness of the first flood of tears -of the depth of protracted suffering-or of the intensity of the afflictions which real friends have been called upon to suffer and endure.

It is a melancholy, though instructive consideration, that the tendency of every thing is to decay; that the happiest prospects and brightest visions of future bliss, are but delusive fancies, which become extinguished when they shine out most vividly, and give the strongest evidence of permanent duration. "Hopes which were angels in their birth," become, from their intimacy and close connexion with human frailty and decay, but things of earth; and thus it is, that those dear objects upon which we have lavished most flattering hopes of future happiness and bliss are removed from us before we are conscious of the palsying illness which quenched the spirit and laid them low. We grieve that they are taken from us so suddenly-that they could not have been spared a little longer, then we could have appreciated their worth, returned their manifold kindnesses, and gradually prepared ourselves for that event which, from its sudden occurrence, unmans our resolutions and prostrates us in the dust by the sternness and severity of the blow. There is another sad thought, but, nevertheless, a true one-that the more friendships we form, the more attachments we make, the more tender and endearing connexions we weave around us and invest ourselves with, in this world, the more of grief and suffering we shall be called to endure. A time will come when all earthly attachments must be severed, and the more fond we have been of

friends and the more devoted to connexions, the more agonizing and severe will be the struggle which separates us and tears us away from among them. It may be that the Stoic's life is productive, eventually, of less pain and suffering than that individual endures, who possesses more delicate sensibility and is alive to the generous impulses of nature and the finest feelings of the human heart; it may be so, but yet his cold enjoyments, and benumbing sympathies afford him but poor comfort, when most he needs the sympathy, the sustaining hand and upholding arm of ardent and enduring friendship. Life would not be worth possessing, if this polar star did not illuminate its dark paths, and throw around its dreariness some evidence of sympathetic love for each other, and though separation, when it comes, crush the heart and tear asunder its very fibres, yet how eagerly we taste of its delicious sweets and exult in the participation of its delirious enjoyments.

TRANSPARENCY OF THE SEA.

THERE is nothing, perhaps, that strikes a northern traveller more than the singular transparency of the waters; and, the farther he penetrates into the Arctic regions, the more forcibly is his attention riveted to this fact. At a depth of twenty fathoms, or one hundred and twenty feet, the whole surface of the ground is exposed to view. Beds, composed entirely of shells, sand lightly sprinkled with them, and sub-marine forests, present, through the clear medium, new wonders to the unaccustomed eye. It is stated by Sir Capel de Brooke, and fully confirmed by my observation in Norway, that sometimes on the shores of Norland the sea is transparent to a depth of four or five hundred feet; and that when a boat passes over subaqueous mountains, whose summits rise above that line, but whose bases are fixed in an unfathomable abyss, the visible illusion is so perfect that one who has gradually in tranquil progress passed over the surface, ascended wonderingly the rugged steep, shrinks back with horror as he crosses the vortex, under an impression that he is falling headlong down the precipice. The transparency of tropical waters generally, as far as my experience goes, is not comparable to that of the sea in these northern latitudes; though an exception be made in favour of the China seas, and a few isolated spots on the Atlantic. Every one who has passed over the bank known to sailors as the Saya de Malha, ten degrees north of the Mauritius, must remember with pleasure the worlds of shell and coral which the translucid water exposes to view, at a depth of thirty to five and thirty fathoms.Elliott's Letters from the North of Europe.

Angry friendship is sometimes as bad as calm enmity. For this reason the cold neutrality of abstract justice is, to a good and clear cause, a more desirable thing than an affection liable to be any way disturbed.

In torrid climes, where Phebus' burning ray
Parches the arid soil, the livelong day,
In cold and frozen regions of the North,
Where from each hill the torrent gushes forth,
In ev'ry mountain, ev'ry lowly vale,
My presence never has been known to fail,
Constant as autumn's fruit, or summer's flow'rs,
Or noiseless flight of swiftly fading hours,
My dwelling is the clouds, and there my voice
Speaks in the thunder's roar-the cannon's noise
In deep redoubling echoes breaks the air,
Swelling more loud and deep-for I am there.-
Old Ocean with his wat'ry "waste of waves;”
The mad tornado that in fury raves,
Would cease to be, or raise their tumult high,
Were I not there, would calm and peaceful die.
And yet, though Nature in her angriest mood
I love to dwell with-be it understood,
At times I shun the restless din of strife,
And lead at worst a very noiseless life.
I fear the lightning's flash, nor can restrain
My timid form from shunning falls of rain,
In beds of violets and roses shrined
Refuge from danger, and sweet ease I find;
Or in the cool brook rippled by no storm,
See in its mirror bright my lengthened form.
1 fly from men, but in their words I breathe-
The soul of joy-I od'rous garlands wreathe,
In sadness or in pain though never seen,
By men of ev'ry tribe invoked I've been
When anguish tortured, or when pleasure smil'd,
My name but mention'd has their care beguiled.
Then all ye wits and sages most profound,
To guess my secret look on all around,
Nor far in trackless wilds unthinking roam
But visit at your ease my lowly home.

Y. P.

TO THE EVENING STAR.

MILD cresset of Eve, in thy lustre appearing,
Like Hope's beacon-lamp, midst yon fast-fading ray,
While the dun-vested twilight in stillness is rearing
Her flowers to the last golden glances of day;
How sweet, when in peace sinks each feverish emotion,
Reclined by the brink of the hoarse sounding shore,
To watch thy pale beain on the bosom of Ocean,
And trace the dim records of joys that are o’er.

Say, Star of the lonely-Night's fairest of daughters,
By whom are thy far distant regions possest?
Do the depths of thy valleys-the banks of thy waters,
Resound to the praises and strings of the blest ;
Where the morn of content breaks, unclouded by sorrow,
And joy blooms, unchilled, by the clear-flowing springs,
And fear shrinks no more from the dark-frowning morrow,
And Time dooms no parting, and Love has no wings?

Oh! fain would we deem that the si ades of the perished, Released from life's ills and the fetters of earth,

Smile thence on the hearts where their memories are che. rished,

And still fondly watch o'er the place of their birth ;
And fain would we trust, that each now mourning spirit,
When one darkness is spread o'er our dust and our
cares,

May hope, by those fountains of light, to inherit
A bliss unpolluted and lasting as theirs.

Whate'er be the scenes which thy radiance discloses,

Or thy realm's joyous tenants, bright gem of the west! "Still, as now, when Eve scatters yon heaven with her

roses,

Be thine influence descending, as balm to the breast: And still, where the minstrel is silently musing, May the smile of thy glory be shed from a-far, Its own gentle ray on his pathway diffusing, Its peace on his visions-thou soft-beaming Star.

SHAKSPEARE.

THE Consciousness of how little individual genius can do to relieve the mass, grinds out, as with a stone, all that is generous in ambition; and to aspire from the level of life is but to be more graspingly selfish.

The first thing printed in New England was the Freeman's Oath, the second an Almanac, and the third a version of the Psalms. This was in the year 1636. The first wind-mill erected in New England was located near Watertown, but was, in the year 1632, (200 years ago) removed to Boston.

Conscience implies goodness and piety, as much as if you call it good and pious. The luxuriant with of the schoolmen, and the confident fancy of ignorant preachers has so disguised it, that all the extravagancies of a light or a sick brain, and the results of the most corrupt heart are called the effects of conscience; and to make it better understood, the conscience shall be

called erroneous, or corrupt, or tender, as they have a mind to support or condemn those effects. So that, in truth, they have made conscience a disease fit to be entrusted to the care of a physician every spring and fall, and he is most like to reform and regulate the operation of it.

A newspaper is the history of the world for one day. It is the history of that world in which we now live, and with it we are consequently more concerned than with those which have passed away, and exist only in remembrance: though, to check us in our too fond love of it, we may consider that the present, likewise, will soon be past, and take its place in the repositories of the dead.

God's mercies are more than we can tell, and they are more than we can feel, for all the world; in the abyss of the divine mercies, like a man diving in the sea, over whose head the waters run insensibly and unperceived, and yet the weight