otherwise an unfortunate husk to put out the eye of one of their invisible children, and for this you will suffer death unless you can repeat poems or fine stories. Numbers of Genii have remained impri

soned in brazen vessels ever since the time of Solomon, and it is not always safe to deliver them. It is a moot point whether they will make a king of you for it, or kick you into the sea. The Genius whom the fisherman sets free in the Arabian Nights,' gives an account of his feelings on this matter, highly characteristic of the nature of these Fairy personages :— During the first hundred years' imprisonment, says he, I swore, that if any one should deliver me before the hundred years expired, I would make him rich, even after his death, but the century run out, and nobody did me that good office. During the second, I made an oath that I would open all the treasures of the earth to any one that should set me at liberty, but with no better success. In the third, I promised to make my deliverer a potent monarch, to grant him every day three requests, of whatever nature they might be; but this century ran out as the two former, and I continued in prison; at last, being angry, or rather mad, to find myself a prisoner so long, I swore that, if afterwards any one should deliver me, I would kill him without mercy, and grant him no other favour but to choose what kind of death he would have; and, therefore, since you have delivered me to day, I give you that choice.

The mode in which the Genii emerge from these brasen vessels is very striking. The spirit into which they have been condensed expands as it issues forth, and makes an enormous smoke, which again compresses into a body, black and gigantic; and the Genius is before you. He is in general a smoke of a weaker turn than our friend just alluded to. If we are to believe the story of the Brasen City in the New Arabian Nights,' whole beds of vessels, containing genuine condensed spirits of Jiun, were to be found in a certain bay on the coast of Africa. Deevs were as plenty as oysters. A sultan had a few brought him, and opening one ofter the other, the giant vapour issued forth, crying out "Pardon, pardon, great Solomon; I will never rebel more."

Kaf is Caucasus, the "great stony girdle." The Persians supposed it, and do so still, to run round the earth, enclosing it like a ring. The earth itself stands on a great sapphire, the reflection of which causes the blue of the sky; and when the sapphire moves there is an earthquake, or some other convulsion of nature. On this mountain the Jinns reign and revel after their respective fashions; and there is eternal war between the good and the bad. Formerly the good Genii, when hard pressed, used to apply to an earthly hero to assist them. ploits of Rustam, before mentioned, and of the ancient Tahmuras, surnamed Deev-Bend or the DeevBinder, form the most popular subjects of Persian heroic poetry.

The ex

Kaf will gradually be undone, and the place of sapphire be not found; but the blue of the sky will remain; and till the Persian can expound the mystery of the cheek he loves, and know the first cause of the roses which make a bower for it, he will still, if he is wise, retain his Pari and his enchanted palace, and encourage his mistress to resemble the kind faces that may be looking at her.

Beautiful Truth.-The bard in whose soul, from that soul's infirmity, the genius of poetry is not strong or lofty enough to sustain him in the sphere of perpetual peace and brightness, may perish by the insolence of pride, and the poison of calumny, and the blows of unscrupulous hostility, and the clashings of interest, and the neglect of indifference, and the collision of his own susceptibility with the coldness of cold natures, and with the hardness of hard natures; but, even in perishing, he will see more and better things in the powers that destroy him, than they themselves are conscious of; and in the waters that engulph his dying limbs will feel the embraces of the beautiful and immortal Ondines.-Monthly Repository.

Real Triumph in Argument.—But let the Deontological law be present to his mind, and the triumph he will desire will be only the triumph of the greatest happiness principle. Contending for that, and for that alone, the victory of any sentiments more friendly to the principle than his own sentiments, will be, in fact, his victory.-Bentham. [The same may be said of all arguments for truth's sake, by real lovers of truth.]

Then came October, full of merrie glee,
For yet his knowle was totty of the must
Which he was treading in the wine-fat's sea,
And of the joyous oyle, whose gentle gust
Made him so frolic, and so full of lust.
Upon a dreadful scorpion he did ride,
The same which, by Diana's doom unjust,
Slew great Orion; and eeke by his side
He had his ploughing-share and coulter ready tyde.
Spenser's Faerie Queene.

Spenser, in marching his months before Great Nature (Faerie Queene,' book vii.) drew his descriptions of them from the world and its customs in general; but turn his October wine-vats into cyderpresses and brewing-tubs, and it will do as well. This month, on account of its steady temperature, is chosen for the brewing of such malt liquor as is designed for keeping. The farmer continues to sow his corn, and the gardener plants forest and fruittrees. Many of our readers, though fond of gardens, will learn, for the first time, perhaps, that trees are cheaper things than flowers; and that, at the expense of not many shillings, they may plant a little shrubbery, or make a rural screen for their parlour or study windows, of woodbine, guelder-roses, bays, arbutus, ivy, virgin's bower, or even the poplar, horse-chesnut, birch, sycamore, and plane-tree, of which the Greeks were so fond. A few roses, also, planted in the earth, to flower about his walls or windows in monthly succession, are nothing, in point of dearness, to roses or other flowers purchased in pots.

long-lived, and may be returned to the nursery-man, Some of the latter are, nevertheless, cheap and at a small expense, to keep till they flower again. But if the lover of nature has to choose between flowers, and flowering shrubs and trees, the latter, in our opinion, are much preferable, in as much as, while they include the former, they can give a more retired and verdant feeling to a place, and call to mind, even in their very nestling and closeness, something of the whispering and quiet amplitude of

nature.

Fruits continue in abundance during this month, as everybody knows from the shopkeeper; for our grosser senses are well informed if our others are not. We have yet to discover that imaginative pleasures are as real and as touching as they, and give them their deepest relish. The additional flowers in October are almost confined to the anemone and scabious; and the flowering trees and shrubs to the evergreen cytisus.

But the hedges (and here let us observe that the fields and other walks, that are free to every one, are sure to supply us with pleasure when every other place fails) are now sparkling with their abundant berries, the wild-rose with the hip, the hawthorn with the haw, the blackthorn with the sloe, the bramble with the blackberry; and the briony, privet, honeysuckle, elder, holly, and woody night-shade, with the other winter feasts for the birds. The wine obtained from the elderberry makes a very pleasant and wholesome drink, when heated over a fire; but the humbler sloe, which the peasants eat, gets the start of him in reputation, by changing its name to port, of which wine it certainly makes a very considerable ingredient.

A gentleman, who lately figured in the beau monde, and carried coxcombry to a pitch of the ingenious, was not aware how much truth he was uttering in his pleasant and disavowing definition of port :“A strong intoxicating liquor, much drank by the lower orders."

Swallows are generally seen for the last time this month; the house-martin the latest. The red-wing, field-fare, snipe, royston crow, and wood pigeon, return from more northern parts. The rooks return himself for the winter. to their roost trees, and the tortoise begins to bury The mornings and afternoons increase in mistiness, though the middle of the day is often very fine; and no weather, when it is unclouded, is apt to give a clearer and manlier sensation than that of October. One of the most curious natural appearances is the gossamer, which is an infinite multitude of little threads shot out by minute spiders, who are thus wafted by the wind from place to place.

The chief business of October, in the great economy of nature, is dissemination, which is performed, among other means, by the high winds, which now return. Art imitates her as usual, and sows and plants also.

We have already mentioned the gardener. This is the time for the domestic cultivator of flowers to finish planting as well, especially the bulbs that are intended to flower early in spring.

And as the chief business of nature this month is arises from vegetable death itself. We need not tell dissemination, or vegetable birth, so its chief beauty our readers we allude to the changing leaves, with all their lights and shades of green, amber, red, light red, light and dark green, white, brown, russet, and yellow of all sorts.

As our ruralities are somewhat barren this week, we piece them out with the following poem, by Mr Keats. It is not one of his finest; but everything which he wrote was fine, and was sure to include some beautiful poetry. The closing stanza is full of the purest description. What a delicious line, in particular, is the third

"While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day!"

TO AUTUMN.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom friend of the maturing sun, Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel: to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft beneath thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind,
As on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy
hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook ;

Or by a cyder-press with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are. they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft,
Or smiling as the light wind lives or dies;

And full grown lambs bleat loud from hilly bourns. Hedge crickets sing: and now, with treble soft,

The red-breast whistles from a garden croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Hannah More.-The following reflexions on the death of Lord Orford are characteristic of the writer. Thus writes Hannah More to her sister Martha, from London, 1787:-" Poor Lord Orford! I could not help mourning for him as if I had not expected it. But twenty years unclouded kindness and pleasant correspondence cannot be given up without emotion. I am not sorry that I never flinched from any of his ridicule or attacks, or suffered them to pass without rebuke. At our last meeting, I made him promise to buy Law's Serious Call." His playful wit, his various knowledge, his polished manner, alas! what avail they now. The most serious thoughts are awakened. Oh! that he had known and believed the things that belonged to his peace. My heart is much oppressed with the reflection."-It is strange that people of Hannah More's turn of mind should always entertain such serious thoughts of their acquaintance in the article of death. may be; but because they take not up with a certain form of speech and demeanor, their after-state is always presumed in the most unfavourable manThere is in this a temper and feeling which religious people should avoid. Take our word for it, it is an infirmity, and was in Hannah More. -Fraser's Magazine

ner.

Amiable they

ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. XLLAWFUL OBEDIENCE; OR THE CUP OF POISON TAKEN FOUR TIMES.

appears

THE account of this affecting tragedy, which to have occurred no long time since, is taken from one of the comprehensive and entertaining summaries just published by the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," entitled The Hindoos.' A daughter thus sacrificed, by an otherwise affectionate parent, a sort of Eastern Virginius, would make a striking drama; only the homely circumstance which constitutes one of the most affecting points in the anguish the refusal of the stomach to second the poison, would have to be modified. The doses given must be changed into small ones-too small to produce any effect, except perhaps an excited and eloquent wakefulness. When actual and dreadful suffering is before us, such homely manifestations of it become nothing. The pettier is absorbed in the greater idea. But human beings, unless given to sarcasm and degradation, do not like to have physical weaknessess deliberately presented to their imaginations; and even then they are apt to take refuge (such as it is!) from the humiliation, in attempting to make a jest of it. A thorough delicacy, or philosophy, in reducing everything to its elements, moral or material, becomes superior to such pollution. And yet there is danger even in that! So nice and perplexing are the balances of things in this world; and so surely must all partake the common burdens of liability, till all can be improved. But we hasten from these mysteries to our story.

Kishna Komari Bae, "the virgin princess Kishna," was in her sixteenth year; her mother was of the Chawura race, the ancient kings of Anhulwara. Sprung from the noblest blood of Hind, she added beauty of face and person to an engaging demeanour, and was justly proclaimed the flower of Rejasthan. The rapacious and blood-thirsty Pat'han, Nawab Ameer Khan, covered with infamy, repaired to Oodipoor, where he was joined by the pliant and subtle Ajit. He was meek in his demeanour, unostentatious in his habits; despising honours, yet covetous of power; religion, which he followed with the zeal of an ascetic, if it did not serve as a cloak, was at least no hindrance to an immeasurable ambition, in the attainment of which he would have sacrificed all but himself. When the Pat'han revealed his design, that either the princess should wed Raja Maun, or by her death seal the peace of Rajwarra, whatever arguments were used to point the alternative, the Rana was made to see no choice between consigning his beloved child to the Rahtore prince, or witnessing the effects of a more extended dishonour from the vengeance of the Pat'han, and the storm of his palace by his licentious adherents: the fiat passed that Kishna Komari should die.

But the deed was left for a woman to accomplishthe hand of man refused it. The harem of an eastern prince is a world within itself; it is the labyrinth containing the strings that move the puppets which alarm mankind. Here intrigue sits enthroned, and hence its influence radiates to the world, always at a loss to trace effects to their causes. Maharaja Dowlut Sing, descended four generations ago from one common ancestor with the Rana, was first sounded to save the honour of Oodipoor; but, horror-struck, he exclaimed, "Accursed the tongue that commands it! Dust on my allegiance if thus to be preserved !" The Maharaja Jowandas, a natural brother, was then called upon; the dire necessity was explained, and it was urged that no common hand could be armed for the purpose. He accepted the poinard, but when in youthful loveliness Kishna appeared before him, the dagger fell from his hand, and he returned more wretched than the victim. The fatal purpose thus revealed, the shrieks of the frantic mother reverberated through the palace, as she implored mercy or execrated the murde ers of her child, who alone was resigned to her fate. But death was arrested, not averted. To use the phrase of the narrator, "she was excused the steel, the cup was prepared," and prepared by female hands! As the messenger presented it in the name of her father, she bowed and drank it, sending up a prayer for his life and prosperity. The raving mother poured imprecations on his head, while the lovely victim, who shed not a tear, thus endeavoured to console her. "Why afflict yourself, my mother, at this shortening of the sorrows of life; I fear not to die! Am I not your daughter? Why should I fear death? We are marked out for sacrifice from our birth; we scarcely enter the world but to be sent out again; let me thank my father that I have lived so long." Thus she conversed, till the nauseating draught refused to assimilate with her blood. Again the bitter potion was prepared, she drained it off; and again it was rejected; but, as if to try

DRUMWHINN BRIDGE

OVER THE RIVER ORR.-BUILT, 1832.
MEEK autumn midnight glancing,
The stars above hold sway,
I bend, in muse advancing,
To lonesome Orr my way.
Its rush in drowsy even

Can make the waste less dead:
Short pause beneath void Heaven,
Then back again to bed!

Hoho! 'mong deserts moory,

See here the craftsman's hand; Vain now, bleak Orr, thy fury,.

On whinstone arch I stand.

Dull Orr, thou moorland river
By man's eye rarely seen,
Thou gushest on for ever,
And wert while earth has been.
There o'er thy crags and gravel,
Thou sing'st an unknown song,
In tongue no clerks unravel!

Thou'st sung it long and long.
From Being's Source it bounded,

The morn when time began; Since thro' this moor has sounded, Unheard or heard of man.

That day they crossed the Jordan,

When Hebrew trumpets rang,
Thy wave no foot was fording,

Yet here in moor it sang.
And I, while thou'st meandered,
Was not, have come to be,
Apart so long have wandered,

This moment meet with thee.
Old Orr, thou mystic water!

No Ganges holier is;
That was Creation's daughter;
What was it fashioned this?
The whinstone Bridge is builded,

Will hang a hundred year;
When bridge to time has yielded,
The brook will still be here.
Farewell, poor moorland river:
We parted and we met;
Thy journeyings are for ever,
Mine art not ended yet.
November, 1832.

BALLS.

"LE BAL EBLOUISSANT! LE BAL DELICIEUX!"
For the London Journal.

Ir is but a few journals back that the Editor gave a
paper on Dancing; but, as is not his wont, left some-
thing still to be said on the subject-or, rather, it
should be said, on a collateral and most important

point-that of balls, or midnight dancing. The Editor touched on the subject, as the padrona of a merrymaking house sometimes yields the tips of her fingers, and gives into the dance for a few moments, and is then off and away again to look after more substantial amusement for her readers-I beg pardonguests. This is a pardonable confusion of ideas: for do we not search the smiling face of the hostess for the cheer of the feast, and read tidings of the table in her eyes? And again-which of the readers of the Journal (alas! why not a Journal de facto) is not sometimes mentally a guest of the Editor, either in his library, or at his breakfast table? Did he not even indulgently introduce us to the assembly rooms of Mr Wilson?

It is a bold undertaking, it must be admitted, to attack a favourite amusement of the fair sex, but having had my attention rather painfully directed of late to the subject, I cannot refrain (in the trust of their utility) from offering a few hints on this same art-pastime or sober-madness-of dancing: name it as you either use it or abuse it. But before I proceed, may I ask why have not medical men rendered any other interference unnecessary, by seriously setting their learned faces against such an unwise misapplication of two great blessings-the hour of rest, and the animal spirits which are both untimely wasted in our modern Dances? Some have, I am aware, done so in books (and what is still more virtuous, in expensive books, too), but all should do so, viva voce, in the families they attend. It will be said, that the business of the physician is to cure, and a cure supposes an illness, and illnesses must have causes alas! they manage these matters better in China. We have discovered the utility of a preventive police; why not borrow from the Celestial Empire the idea of a preventive faculty?

Not to incur the suspicion of Vandalism, I must acknowledge a great admiration for the dance, as brought to perfection by the artist-for there we are enjoying, as it were, a visible music-an embodied harmony. I must also "confess the soft impeachment," and own a love for dancing, when, like a laughing, rosy, yet etherial, nymph, she surprises us with her presence in the winter's evening, as she is suddenly found at high jinks among the youngsters, leading them on to her tuneful, graceful sports. And, in fact, I must proclaim a respect for dancing in every shape, when confined to seasonable hoursto young limbs, (or young hearts)—and brows not furrowed-but for Balls! ah-" take any shape but that."

The ball-room is very tempting-very splendid— I admit the interchange of gratulations, compliments, and civilities, all very agreeable; and, perhaps, if the enjoyment took place earlier in the evening, one might not complain: but what a time of night to begin to be happy-ten! Certainly this is one mode of killing time and one's self, too, at the same moment. Talk of the march of intellect! let me hear of the dance of intellect. People say the "schoolmaster is abroad "but not after ten, ye revellers not after ten! He knows not of your doings, or ye would have heard of it.

But before I come to my subject, let me clear away all the off-shoots. One more, then, ye lovers of dancing, and of me, its eloquent advocate!

Commiseration principally attaches itself to the female (the habits of men and boys bear them up against the ill effects of temporary confinement; but, with the poor girl, the heated ball-room is only the climax of the unnatural course of her ordinary mode of life); but is it not a shame to bring the poor boys into the ball-room to stand there, miserably out of their element, wondering when the fun will begin? I am sure this is a full retribution for all boyish peccadilloes. I never witness the piteous

sight without thinking of the martyr of the inno cents, and look on the lord of the feast as a refined and exquisite modern Herod, while, in fact, he is labouring to "make everybody happy."

It is all very well for those who are arrived at years of indiscretion, to dance away the hours of repose. No doubt they could give good and sufficient reasons why a night spent in restraint and in an heated atmosphere is a recompense for the head-ache, the restlessness, the lassitude, the fever, of the ensuing day. With me, imagination is not so indulgent as to transform the broad-cloth of an elderly gentleman's coat-tail into the rainbow wings of some gay creature of the element; but if the gentleman can fancy himself something sylphic, well and good. But I beg pardon-the amusement of another should be held sacred from all carping, though one may be allowed a little license, considering that, while these things are persisted in, everybody condemns them as wearisome in their own hearts-I would say everybody who has outlived the creaming animal spirits of youth. Who has not noticed good folks ejaculating their limbs with all the gravity of an Indian pirouetting his last before the fire that is to consume him, or of a mathematician solving a problem, and acting the diagram at the same time? Who has not laughed at the desperate steps taken by the unfortunate Cavalier Seul, or, in English, Cavalier Surly? Mais, revenons à nous moutons: my business is with those without whose presence the dance would be at an end—I mean young ladies. Let the "tough seniors" enjoy this peculiar gratification to their hearts' content; but oh, let them not lead their children into the same error! The "tender juvenal" is but too content to snatch with delight at the joys of the passing hour-experience cannot have taught her to dread the recoil: the young girl will drink to the dregs the cup of pleasure presented to her lips; what shall we say to that parental hand which tempts those lips with a poison?

It would be a different case were there no "dancing hours" but those of midnight and the early morning. Rather than that ladies should not mix in society, large assemblies might be tolerated. But how many sensible people there are, who prove to their own satisfaction, and to the delight of those whom they gather together, that it is very possible to assemble all their loving and lovely friends around them, and yet exceed not a moderate number, proving, also, that there is time enough for enjoyment and merriment long before "the hour when churchyards yawn" for nightly revellers.

Need I repeat here the delightful truth, that woman nowhere shines to such effect as before her own hearth; and that, in proportion as the sphere is contracted in which her faculties are called upon to act, so will her powers of pleasing be enlarged?

There is a youth in the day, as there is a youth in man. They should dwell hand in hand together, interchanging gladness and beauty. Compare her, who, like Aurora's hand-maid, greets you at the cheerful breakfast-table, with rosy smiles and cheeks (I vote them not vulgar)-with flowery trophies of her morning's ramble in her hand-herself as fresh and gay, with the wearied fair you saw the preceding night, her eyes paling as the stars pale at day's approach, and her beauty blighted, as is that of the flowers brought, like her, into the withering atmosphere of riot. Compare the two, and account to me for the motives which can lead the latter lady to make such a sacrifice of health and beauty, and style it pleasure! I maintain that she has no motives at all satisfactory to her own mind; but that the bad taste of the matter must be laid, with other mighty charges, either at the door of fashion, or to the ostentation—to the false indulgence, or to the ambition of

parents.

There are many who, proud of their daughters' superior strength in this particular, set danger at defiance. But while they admire, let them respect this excellency of constitution, and beware how they reduce its strength to a level with the weakness of the less fortunate. Woman has full need of all the powers with which nature has gifted her, if she would not

prove rather a curse than a blessing in the sphere to which she is called. Why, then, are these powers to be wasted in frivolity, or, rather say, in untimely amusements? If our daughters, I repeat, are blessed with health, as great as the fondest parent could desire, we may depend on it the time will come soon enough when that gift will be largely drawn upon by the cares and illnesses incident to their future stations. If they must keep the night alive, now, for the fun of the thing, they will have enough of the "watches of the night" in after times, and leisure to regret the strength of body they then wasted.

them do so once and away, twice, if they please, or oftener, provided it be a very rare event in their lives, an epoch from which to date perseverance, rather then cold or cough. People must not be too inex orably and everlastingly superior to every doubtful degree of social habit, lest they grow proud and carking, or timid, or uncharitable, and miss the beauty even of their virtue. Yet even then every care should be taken by parents and friends to guard against the lamentable evils so well deprecated by our correspondent; and the merry indulgence should not be taken at all, if security cannot be had against melancholy results. But again we ask, why are not domestic dances oftener resorted to, without any fuss and preparation, and purely for the sense and good humour of the thing? We have a vast deal of sound think ing to arrive at, in this very thoughtful country of ours! We are always waiting, and scheming, and laying in prodigious stocks of means, to be happy. Why do we not enjoy ourselves more with our stock as we go? Why not see that all rooms are ballrooms, and that every passing moment is as good and precious as every other, if we did but know how to make it so? We have not enough extempore happiness in this country. In waiting for large results, we lose those thousands of small ones that make up, after all, the largest results of general comfort.]

An English party always strikes me as an assembly got together by people who dread such meetings from some cause or other; and, accordingly, seek to rid themselves of the painful tax by one mighty and overpowering effort, going forth almost into the highways, and obliging all to come to see what a number of people they can gather together, and what an expense they can afford to put themselves to. The grand affair over-their friends are no more thought of, till another year gone tells that it is again time for them to be hospitable. And it is to patched up meetings like these that we are to send our daughters. No one will dispute that the physical effects of these parties are far from wholesome: I have always found that their moral effects were as little enticing to a judicious parent. When will people do in England as is done on the Continent, that is, throw open their doors, at an early hour, on a certain night in every week, or fortnight, to all their acquaintance with whom they are on terms of amity, TO THE EDITOR OF THE LONDON JOURNAL, ON THE and pass with them a cheerful, serious, or a joyous hour, just as suits the individual tastes, or time of life, of their guests, and let conversation, dancing, and play, go on, each in its snug corner, without the restraints of ostentation and finery?

One word on the most melancholy part of our subject—the immediate and often irremediable mischief which follows on "grand balls." In the severest part of our winter, at an hour, whose breath strikes to the bones even of the strongest-under a sky, rude and inclement, or distilling dews and fogs, poisonous as the malaria of the Pontine Marshesthe weak girl is led, flushed and joyous-and, in her joy, careless and unguarded—from the heated scene, into the raw air. There are some, who, smothered in cashmere, are hurried at a step into a close carriage, and thus escape at little risk; but in a circle where fortune is not so favourable, what danger is not incurred in waiting for the hired conveyance, and in its cold, rickety fabric, when arrived?

There are few readers whose recollection will not serve them with some unhappy instance, in which months of illness, succeeded too often by death itself, has followed upon this exposure.

For then comes the cough and the pale cheek, and life burning itself out fast in fever. The laughing eye becomes extinct and sunken, only to be lit again by the fearful blaze of consumption, as if death held his watch-tower there. The stream of life is polluted, weakened where it looks for strengthening. Peevishness and discontent seize on the once unruf fled temper. Then have we hours of hope and months of despair, the self-accusations of the wretched parent, the flickering hopes of the victim, and the deserted hearth.

Ye natural guardians, whose breasts are not open to other emotions, think how you would suffer if wife or daughter were ordered to the south. Think on the travelling expences to Devon, Montpellier, Madeira! think and tremble!

I have refrained from touching on the moral effects of my subject, partly as I could not do them justice, and partly because too many severe truths must be told, and partly--if I may close this lecture with a joke because there is no hard hitting allowed in this peaceful arena: we all fight here, as we dance in gloves.

[We add a note merely to say that we agree in every syllable with our correspondent, and recommend his advice to earnest attention. We would not say that sensible and social people should never go to a midnight ball,-not once in their lives. Let

A DOUBT AND AN ANSWER.

SPIRIT OF HIS RECENT WRITINGS.

Он, H, thou first refiner
Of the wordy strife,
Making daily life

And the human heart diviner!
Yet, think! a smile for ever
On all things thrown,
Defeats its own
Benevolent endeavour.

Love is enhanced by sparing;-
For praise and blame

Are both the same
When the bad and good are sharing.
Too much does such approving
Seem a studied task,

Or a ready mask,
And not a genuine loving.

Such wholesale satisfaction
With ill and good,
To the full pursued
Would stop all virtuous action.
Such doctrine, kind Professor,
Keeping all bent

In meek content,
Well suits the strong oppressor.

New blandishments are on thee:-
Let it not be said,
When the storm is fled,
That the sunny beam has won thee.
Φίλος.

Canterbury, September 1834.

We thank our correspondent for his kind expressions, and for the interest he takes in the consequences of people's writings; but he misconceives us extremely if he supposes that we are bent upon "smiling for ever," and "on all things." Did we do so when we wrote the article entitled ' A Human Being and a Crowd? Do we really do so at any time? Is there no mixture of gravity, of serious thoughts, of thoughts elevated to pleasures above smiling? Do we not speak of death, of the stars, of tears, of the perplexities and struggles of existing systems? And do we not attempt to persuade people out of artificial troubles and uncharitable mistakes,

things which imply a ground of seriousness, and a very grave one too, even when visited by the sunshine of loving endeavour, instead of the doubtful light of fire and sword?

Pleasure, and that of a more pleasurable kind than usual, is, undoubtedly, the object of this journal; but pleasure of a noble sort, the pleasure of realizing

"The goods the gods provide us,"—

the pleasure recommended alike by the most doubting experiment and the most trusting faith,—that of making the utmost of this green and golden world, the smallest particles of whose surface we have not yet learned to turn to account, that of profiting alike from the toil that is incumbent on us, and from "the lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin," that of omitting no real manly or womanly duty, (how often do we not talk of both); but at the same time of omitting to take no fitting repose or reward for it, seeing that nothing is complete in this world but where the strong (which is health of workmanship) and the beautiful (which is fitness of result) combine to render it so, and that the same sense of a want which is given us in small things, to incite us to supply it (and therefore we do supply it) is given us, by parity of reasoning, to incite us to supply it in the greatest (and why should we not?) Mankind are small and short-lived creatures, viewed only in their present mode of being; but they are great and full of years, considered as a hopeful, a retrospective, and a future species; and when we think of a few hundreds of ages compared with the lapse of time, the happy settlement of this earth may be no greater an action in the eye of eternity than the righting of a shoe.*

THE TWO OAKS IN HYDE-PARK. DEAR MR EDITOR,-Be so good as inform your correspondent who inquires about the Two Oaks, that they are lifeless, and that during the alterations, or, I believe, improvements, as they were called, which a few years ago took place in Hyde-park, when the solitude of that sequestered spot where the trees stand was invaded by a carriage drive, the idea was in charity conceived of clothing the naked members of these fakeers with a subsidiary verdure, for that of which time and nature had deprived them, thus offering to the wondering eyes of the metropolis, real old trees with real ivy round them. Shoots were planted round their bases, and a railing added to preserve the infant parasites from beasts and depredating hands.

The ivy has grown very slowly, and it has been said, though I doubt if correctly, that the dead and barren tree does not afford it sufficient encouragement. This I altogether suspect: there is not so much affinity between human and vegetable flatterers; on the contrary, I cannot but think it hard to call this beautiful climber a parasitic plant. Does it not better deserve to be called the emblem of Charity, covering with its rich and verdant mantle the most desolate and deserted objects? In the meantime, however, the trees stand like pugilists clothed upwards only to the waist, and their arms are thrown towards the sky with an air of wild and angry contention not a little singular and picturesque, and which, when they shall be crested over with the evergreen, can scarcely be excelled. I remain dear Sir, also, Sept, 27, 1834.

A CONSTANT READER.

THE SPECULATOR IN SPITE OF

HIMSELF.

We believe that if all men thought better of one another, that is to say, the best they could, doing justice to what is good, and making allowance for

the causes and circumstances over which the first formation of character has no control, all "virtuous action" would be so far from "stopped," that it would proceed a thousand times more smoothly and successfully, and a stop be put to a thousand pernicious re-actions of hopelessness and resentment. Neither would the "oppressor " profit by it, except as a man bettered and instructed; for, in partaking of the charitable construction, he would learn to give it; and in the general progress of beneficent knowledge, he could, neither from feeling nor good sense, remain what he is. He would know his oppression to be good for nobody, not even himself.

As to "blandishments," and "sunny beams," and the "storm that is fled," we think the storm is indeed fled, not surely over our own individual head, which has yet to struggle with the consequences of resisting it, but from the fair face of the world and its hopes; and so thinking, we hold that we have a right to look after the welfare of that head, and to indulge the inclination, which, we will venture to say, was always natural to us,—that of grappling in peace and good will with the hands of all men, and interchanging as many good offices as we can with all our fellow-beings, especially with those whom we conceive qualified by nature to advance the development of the world's best faculties, however obscured their sympathies may have been (like our own) during the melancholy irritabilities of warfare.

Not that we think heaven meanwhile insensible to individual suffering, whatever may be the necessity for its appearing to be so. Among the infinite mysteries of other modes of being, and its renewals, it is easy to conceive that there is some mode understood for reconciling all. But far from easy is it to conceive that the maker of sensibility can be insensible to it.

entitled Le Caméléon.']

tree.

He

His uneasiness was however much increased, when he observed all eyes fixed upon him, and the strangers, gathering in little knots, begin to whisper together, but without for an instant removing their eyes. At last one of them left the circle, and, coming straight up to him, asked him, with some embarrasment, what motive had brought him to the place? The Count, keeping to his first idea, without losing his self-possession, answered firmly, Probably the same, sir, that has brought others." The deputed mediator retires, rejoins his companions, and the whispering is renewed with greater activity than ever. The negotiator presently returns, to offer the Count two hundred louis if he will withdraw! Astonished by so unexpected a proposal, he began to find his adventure highly diverting; without understanding anything of the business he was thus involuntarily engaged in, he answered at random, that it was not enough. The ambassador again retires, and again returns, to urge his proposal. The Count persists; and, after many trials of his firmness, is offered five hundred louis! He agrees, the gold is placed in his hands, and, mounting his horse," he departs amidst all possible civilities, as glad to get clear of his suspicious company, as they appeared to be to get rid of him.

Arrived at Milan, M. de Flamarens sought for some information that might elucidate the mys

terious appearances he had witnessed, and, from what he learned, he gathered, that chance had brought him to Fort de la Biche, at the precise time that had been appointed for a sale which was to be made of a great part of the wood. Thence it was not difficult to conclude that he had fallen in with a party who had combined to bid for it and that, taking him for an interloper, who will bid against them, they had thought his absence cheaply purchased at the rate of five hundred louis.

Good News for Setters-up of London Journals. If the desire to maximize good were present to the minds of public writers-if it were ever less their purpose to give pain to some object of individual hostility, than to further the great ends of popular felicity, the atmosphere of opinion would soon become bright and clear.- Bentham.

Hannah More.--In her thoughts on her own way of life, at Cowslip Green, the amount of false sentiment. is prodigious. She separates her religious duties from the active engagements of her life, a fatal error, which has led to the abstraction and mysticism of nunneries and monasteries, and their consequent vices. In tending of flowers, and even in paying visits, devotion may mingle; and if admiration of the works of God and charity to our neighbours be the concomitants of either act, more religion will belong to it than to all the leisure in the world. [From an excellent article in Fraser's Magazine,' on the "Life and Writings of Mrs Hannah More."]

WE are very sensible of the continued kindness of The Scotsman, and of the cordial approbation bestowed upon us by the Glasgow Liberator.

The Editor will attend to the wishes of Z. Z., which came too late for his last communication. He does not see, however, that the hero of the verses in question could be offended with them, even if he recognized himself as the subject; which, perhaps, among the numerous worthies of his calling, is not very likely. The portrait, though genuine, is painted in a spirit which no honest traveller through the rounds of this life could be offended with.

The author of the verses on "Betty Bolaine" fears he may have hurt the feelings of an individual who is in the enjoyment of the property she left to an intermediate party. Assuredly he had no such intention, nor did we know of the existence of that individual.

A Constant Reader says, in reference to a contingency apprehended from the late eruption of Mount Vesuvius, that it was impossible for any direction of the lava to have affected the city of Naples, as there are hills between that place and the mountain.

R. R. of Leicester, "a youthful subscriber," who will learn to blot and to concentrate as he grows older, sends us some verses on a dying soldier, of which the two following stanzas are worth extracting for the contrast they present between a domestic death-bed, and that on a field of battle :Trampling hoofs-the gentle handsTo smooth his pillow down; Savage shouts the soothing sounds To lull his dying moan!

Frantic shrieks and curses dark, The prayers around him said; Ruthless drums and cannons roar

The toll when he is dead!

The Christianity of the London Journal is not of the gloomy and contradictory sort inquired into by "One of the Million.”

The Spirit of Business' has points in it; but altogether it appears to us not worthy of the talents of its author.

Timothy Timorous' will be good enough to find the answer to his query in the one given to E. D. in our last week's Journal.

"George Hawthorne's' idea of stories founded on the Police cases might be turned, we think, to good account; but we are unable to entertain the project in our publication.

We thought we had noticed the effusion to the Buttercup. There are pleasant things in it; but it is too long. May we extract from it? There was no offence whatsoever in the proposal of J. M. C. We shall look at his verses again. The Sonnet to the Grave' shall be inserted.

LONDON: Published by H. Hooper, 13, Pall Mall East. From the Steam-Press of C. & W, REYNELL, Little Pulteney-street,