The influence of dress on the mind may be exemplified also in the case of the Quakers; and not less so in that variety among them familiarly called wet Quakers, in whom each successive relaxation of religious principle is accompanied by a corresponding additional approximation of the coat to the ordinary cut of worldly-minded tailors. Indeed, in every instance we find a tendency in those who go about any mischief, or indulge in any disreputable vice, to first put themselves into a disguise, lest the habitual dress should suggest a reproach, and warn them that they were about something unworthy of the cloth. Such probably is the origin of the phrase turncoat, which may not be altogether so metaphorical in its inuendo as most people imagine.

These things, however, we would advance with a proper modesty, and at a quantum valeant estimation: for we "think nobly of the soul, and hold not with Pythagoras;" cucullus, we are also told, non facit Monachum. Non constat, indeed, even if our hypothesis be received, that the dress itself may not be an emanation from the interior sentiment; and that the "inky suit" of the mourner, may not be a reflection of the darkness of spirit, which is within. On either view of the case, however, the moral does not the less vigorously run against the lachesse of a professional disregard for the rigour of costume. Folks may cry "absurd" till they are hoarse, against episcopal cauliflowers, or against the barrister's prunella; after all, there is much virtue in such things; and physicians would never have fallen to be feed like apothecaries, if they had possessed the vous to have stuck by the bag-wigs and amber-headed canes of their wiser ancestors; so let the world look to it.

μ.

LITERARY PROPHECIES.

THE works of speculative authors frequently contain passages prophetical of future discoveries. Thus several writers appear to have had dim glimpses of the circulation of the blood before it was fully revealed to Harvey; and we have just stumbled on a hint of Coleridge's curiously à propos to the Bude Light, and the brilliant Lime Light of Mr. Cary, exhibited at the Surrey Zoological Gardens. It is a letter from Germany, dated May 19, 1799.

"On our road to Goslar, we passed by several smelting-houses and wire-manufactories, and one particularly noticeable, where they separate the sulphur from the ores. The night was now upon us, and the white and blue flames from this building formed a grand and beautiful object. So white was the flame, that in the manufactory itself it appeared quite like the natural daylight. It is strange that we do not adopt some means to render our artificial light more white."

H.

WOMAN'S LOVE.

A TALE FOUNDED UPON FACTS.

BY JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES, ESQ.

You reason well, John, upon the steadfastness and purity of Woman's Love. Its purity is the secret of its steadfastness; and woman's love is in the general pure. Temperament, education, may produce a difference-education, the greater., The best samples of the sex are homebred. Send boys to schools if you please: they are destined for the world-the bustle, the scramble, the crush; but woman is the household deity! Train her to the roof.

The heroine of my story was a homebred woman; the narrator was the hero of it.

Two years my senior was Jessie Halliday. She was associated with the earliest, brightest scenes of my life-my playmate, my fellow-student, my teacher, my champion. I had an indulgent father, an idolizing mother, relatives and friends that made much of me; but no one was so kind to me as Jessie Halliday! She was sweetness, made up of good sense, good humour, truth, enthusiasm, consistency, and tenderness. Never shall I forget Paul and Virginia; I had attained my thirteenth birthday when she read it to me. Equal perhaps to the narrative, still I was a span or so short of the argument; but she made me understand it all. Her modulation alone, informed me where the thrill of the pathos lay; but how was the lesson emblazoned by the expression of her deep-blue eyes, as she occasionally turned them upon me-now bright with triumphant sympathy at the perfecting of pure, reciprocated passion, now lowering with apprehension at the fickleness of destiny, or the inscrutable contradictions of Providence; or melted with truth at the frustration to which earthly hope is obnoxious, even though enshrined in the very temple of love, and trust, and innocence !

Two winter evenings did the reading of the story occupy. The first time, we sat, I recollect, at opposite sides of the table; she left off where the mutual passion of the hero and heroine is unequivocal. The next time we sat side by side; and as she resumed the story, while with one hand she supported her cheek, she passed the other behind me, resting it on my shoulder. As the interest deepened, she drew closer to me. I could feel her chest heaving. I could have counted every throb of her heart; and when the catastrophe brought the pathetic relation to a close, she threw her arms about my neck, and dropping her head upon my breast, lay weeping there.

"Look at Paul and Virginia personified!" exclaimed my mother. Jessie's father and she were brother and sister-in-law-they had been playing a game of piquet, but had laid down their cards, and had been evidently watching us.

I see Jessie Halliday, now, as she suddenly withdrew herself from me and started to her feet, her eyes cast upon the ground, and her cheek and temples one flush of the deepest crimson. As I gazed upon her, a sensation which I had never experienced before electrified my

heart, and set every fibre of my frame vibrating! Oh, that one exquisite moment of my existence, never enjoyed before nor since!-never to be repeated-never to be forgotten!

The game of piquet had been resumed. We were now unobserved, I felt myself irresistibly attracted towards Jessie Halliday. I approached her and took her hand, which convulsively closed upon mine. I felt that she was all in a tremour. She stood utterly abstracted.

"Dear Jessie," said I.

She started, and came at once to herself; and turning upon me, for a moment, her eyes, with an expression beaming from them which I had never witnessed there before, abruptly disengaged her hand, and vanished from the apartment.

That night I neither absolutely slept nor lay awake. My sensations were those of one who dreams with consciousness that he does so. Paul and Virginia were enacted over again, but I was Paul and Jessie Halliday was Virginia.

Paul

But the incidents abounded with tender amplifications. thought and felt what the author had never dreamed of! As he carried Virginia across the brook there was the throbbing heart with which, boy as he was, he caught her up in his arms; there were the kisses which he imprinted upon her vestment as her sweet side lay pressed to his cheek, and the embrace with which he strained her form to his own, in the act of setting her down. Where they lose themselves, too, in one of their wanderings through the island, how short fell the story of the facts of the situation! There were all the suspense, it is true, and the dread; but there were also the luxury of solely protecting, the murmur and the caress to comfort, the looks, feeding hope with love, the blessed "together" which defied suffering itself to come without a precious solace! Occasionally was the narrative broken off, when the striking of the hours, or some noise in the house, or upon the street, recalled me to perfect self-recollection; but it was ever then to change the fable, for the figure of the sweet girl that had been reading it to me; and who still stood before me with abashed eyes, and burning cheek, as the remark of my mother, caused her to start up from my side, and transfixed her in confusion to the floor.

The next day I returned to college; but returned as one endued with a new being. The flimsy, airy, heedless spirits of boyhood had vanished, and in their place appeared a thoughtfulness, an energy, a feeling of importance, an unutterable sense of satisfaction-such as one may be supposed to experience who suddenly falls into some unexpected rich, enviable possession. I felt love for the first time! I felt confident of its return. The fiction had opened my eyes to the perception of the reality. The passion whose name had never been uttered by either of us I detected by its signs. The heart of its mystery had been revealed to me by the mantling cheek of Jessie Halliday. At one and the same moment, the conviction, young as I was, shot through my soul, that I was the object of her first affections, and that she was the object of mine. Neither had ever admitted any regular associate of the opposite sex, except the other.

Three years during which I was enjoined not to return home-instead of weakening tended rather to strengthen this impression-and yet, for the whole of that time I never once set eyes upon her who had excited it but now my collegiate course was complete, and to-morrow

I was to set out on my return to my mother's. Oh, if ever I thought of Jessie Halliday, tenderly, rapturously, yearningly, it was then! From the moment I awoke in the morning till that of stepping into the stage-coach, from the starting of the stage-coach till its arrival, not one second was she absent from my soul.

The moment I was set down I flew to her father's house-asked if she was within-was answered in the affirmative-darted up stairsbolted into the drawing-room-but found, instead of her, a young gentleman seated there, who rose as the door opened, but seeing me sat down again, evidently disappointed and chagrined. I knew not who he was; but the moment my eyes fell upon him, a sickness came over my heart, such as I had never experienced before, and not more new than deadly. I felt as if, when I fancied myself upon the verge of reunion, the most blissful, I was about to encounter avoidance, estrangement, abandonment. For a moment I debated within myself, whether I should not turn and rush from beneath the roof I had been so impetuously eager to enter; but a light footstep descending the stairs determined me to remain, and passing into the further room-the drawing-room consisted of two apartments communicating with folding-doors -I threw myself upon a chair, and with a palpitating heart awaited the approach of Jessie Halliday.

I heard the door open-again the stranger rose; but not to resume his seat as before in disappointment. Had not his countenance, which now brightened up with pleasure, convinced me that the person whom he expected had entered, I should have been assured of it by the eagerness with which he sprang forward, his hand extended in the direction of the door, which, from the place where I sat, was completely out of sight, I felt positive that it was Jessie Halliday, and expected every moment to see her advance, conducted by the stranger, to a chair, but I was disappointed. She came no further.

I heard a tender salutation murmured, though as far as I could perceive, unresponded to on her part; and then there was a whisper, and then a pause, followed almost immediately by the closing of the door, and the sound of footsteps descending the staircase.

"Was I alone?"

After waiting a few seconds I passed into the outer apartment-it was empty!

"I was an intruder! The stranger wished to be alone with Jessie Halliday! He had anticipated her entrance into the room-had stopped her at the threshold, and had prevailed upon her to adjourn with him to the parlour!" and here I heard the parlour-door shut.

I bounded down stairs, let myself out, unperceived, and hastening home without casting a look on either side of me, lest I should be impeded by the recognition of some old acquaintance, threw myself with other feelings than I had anticipated, into the arms of my expecting mother.

Half an hour elapsed.

"Well, Ralph!" at length exclaimed my mother, after having looked at me several times inquiringly, as if in expectation of my saying something. "Well, Ralph!-you astonish me! I never thought it was in your nature to forget an old friend, and here have you been at home for nearly an hour, and never have you once inquired for

Jessie Halliday; though I should not have been surprised, Ralph, had her father's house been the first you had called at.”

"It was the first," said I.

"Then still you are my own flesh and blood," rejoined she. "That girl is a miracle of affection, sincerity, and consistency-not to speak of her beauty, Ralph-the rarest thing I ever looked upon, and I have seen fine women in my time. There is scarce a young man in Dwho has not proposed for her; and of all who have proposed for her, there is not one who has not been at once, and decidedly rejected."

"Not one?" interrogated I.

"Not one," repeated my mother.

"She has a lover at present," said I.

"I know she has," returned my mother, meaningly.

"He was with her this morning."

"I almost guessed as much before you told me, and am not at all surprised at it." said my mother.

"She granted him a private interview."

"Of course," resumed she; " and perhaps he popped the question, and got a courtesy, and maybe something else for his answer. There is the dinner-bell," added she. "Come, we have no time to waste. The evening will be a busy one;-mind, Ralph, your first partner tonight must be Jessie Halliday."

There was to be a ball at my mother's that evening, in honour of my

return.

After dinner I repaired to my room.

"I will not dance with her," said I to myself, as I prepared my toilette. "I scorn to dispute possession of her with any man. Rivalry on my part is at an end, the moment she admits a competitor for her favour." Dear girl! I had never yet accosted her as a lover. Had she encouraged twenty suitors, she had been innocent of any breach of faith with me.

Still a hundred times did I repeat to myself, "I will not dance with her to-night."

Of all human beings, the sulky lover plays the bear to the highest admiration. The ball, as I have said, had been given on my account; yet, anxious to avoid the chances of encountering Jessie Halliday, I fastened on the first two or three old acquaintances that entered, and keeping them in conversation, aloof from the rest of the visiters, left to my mother the office of receiving and welcoming the company-nay more, I drew one of my friends apart from the others, and under the plea of showing him some rare books which I had brought with me from college-prizes for proficiency-contrived to steal out by another door, and taking him up with me into my sleeping apartment, unlocked the box that contained my literary treasures, and displayed them before him-ay, and gave him a brief abstract of the argument of each work; and when I had exhausted every topic for question or remark, I know not whether I should not have proposed a social stroll, dressed as we were, to the other end of the town and back again, had not a knock, accompanied by the voice of my mother, calling me, admonished me that she was at the door, and frustrated the enterprise in embryo. Apologizing to my friend, whom she requested to rejoin the