trick that was hatched, he had such a laughing happy disposition, and took his very punishment so good-humouredly, that it went to my heart to think of chastising him; and as for the fool's cap, and the broom sceptre, they were no punishment to him, for he never seemed better pleased than when he had them on; and when mounted thus on the top of the black stool, he seemed so delighted, and pulled such faces at the rest of the boys, that no mortal flesh could stand to their gravity near him, and my seat of learning was in danger of becoming a perfect hobbleshaw of diversion. How to master this, was past my power. But Charlie's versatility ended it by his own will, and before he was half learned in his preliminary humanities, his father and he had taken some scheme into their heads, and he was removed from me and sent to the college.

I know not how it was, but for several years I lost sight of Charlie, until I heard that his father was dead, and that he was now a grown man, and likely to make a great fortune. This news was no surprise to me, for I now begun to make the observation, that the greatest fools that I had the honour of preparing for the world, most generally became the wealthiest men.

It was one day when on a summer tramp, that entering a decentish town, and looking about at the shop windows, I began to bethink me of the necessity that had fallen upon me, by the tear and wear of the journey, of being at the expense of a new hat, so I entered a magazine of miscellaneous commodities, when who should astonish me in the person of the shopkeeper, but my old pupil Charlie Cheap. "Merciful me! Charlie,' said I, "who would have expected to find you at this trade! I thought you had gone to the college to serve your time for a minister of the gospel."

was plodding along a country road some ten miles from the fore-mentioned town, when looking over the hedge by my side, I saw a team of horses pulling a plough towards me; and my cogitations were disturbed by the yo-ing and yau-ing of the man who followed it. Something struck me that I knew the voice, and when the last of the men came up, I discovered under the plush waistcoat and farmer's bonnet, my old friend Charlie Cheap. "Soul and conscience!" cried he, thrusting his clayey hand through the hedge and grasping mine-"if this is not my old master the Dominie!" and truly he gave me the farmer's gripe, as if my hand had been made of cast metal.

"What are you doing here, Charlie?" said I. "Why are you not minding your shop, instead of marching there in the furrows at the plough-tail?"

Chop," said he, "what chop? Na, na, Dominie, I've gotten a better trade by the hand."

"It cannot be possible, Charlie, that ye've turned farmer?"

"Whether it be possible or no, it is true," said Charlie;" but dinna be standing there whistling through the hedge, but come in by the slap at the corner, and ye shall taste my wife's treacle ale."

"Well really," said I, when I had got down into the farm-house, "this is the most marvellous change.'

"No change to speak of," said he; "do ye think I was going to be tied up to haberdrabbery all my days? No, no, I knew I had a genius for farming, the chop-keeping grew flat and unprofitable, a chield from England set up next door to me, so a country customer took a fancy for a town life, I sold him my stock in trade, and he sold me the stock on his farm. He stepped in behind the counter, and I got behind the plough, so here I am, happier than ever; besides, harkie! I am making money fast.'

"Are you really? But how do you know that?"

"Can I not count my ten fingers? Have I not figured it on black and white over and over again? There's great profits with management such as mine, that I can assure you, Sir."

Well," said I, "I am really happy to hear it, and I hope, besides that, that you like your employment."

66

bailie yet."

"Well, I am really delighted too," said I: "and from my knowledge of bailies, I would not wonder in the least-so good bye, Mr. Cheap. I think this hat looks very well on

me.

"Makes you ten years younger, Sir-good bye! wish you your health to wear it."

It might be a twelvemonth after that, I

"But you'll change again shortly, I am afraid, Mr. Cheap."

"That's impossible, for I've got a nineteen years lease. I'll grow grey as a farmer. Well, good bye, Dominie. Be sure you give us a call the next time ye pass, and get a drink of our treacle ale."

"Well, really this is the most extraordinary thing," said I to myself as I walked up the lane from the farm house. "I shall be curious to ascertain of his going to stick to the farming till he's ruined."

I thought no more of Changeable Charlie for above a year, when, coming towards the same neighbourhood, I resolved to go a short distance out of my way to pay him a visit. My road lay across a clear country stream which winded along a pleasant green valley beneath me; and as I drew near the rustic bridge, my ear caught the lively sound of a waterfall, which murmured from a picturesque spot among opening woods, a little way above the bridge. A little mill-race, with its narrow channel of deep level water, next attracted my notice; and presently after, the regular splash of a water-wheel, and the boom of a corn-mill became objects of my meditative observation. The mill looked so quaint and rustic by the stream, the banks were so green and the water so clear, that I was tempted to wander towards it, down from the bridge, just to make the whole a subject of closer observation.

A barefooted girl came forth from the house and stared in my face, as a Scotch lassie may be supposed to do at a reasonable man. "Can you tell me," said I, willing to make up an excuse for my intrusion, "if this road will lead me to the farm of Longrigs, which is occupied by one Mr. Cheap?" The lassie looked in my face with a thieveless smile, and, without answering a word, took a bare-legged race into the mill. Presently, a great lumbering miller came out, like a walking bag of flower from beside the hopper, and I immediately saw he was going to address me. Never did I see such a snowy man. His miller's hat was inch thick with flour; he whitened the green earth as he walked, the knees of his breeches were loose, and the stockings that hung about his heels, would have made a hearty meal for a starving gar

rison.

"What can the impudent rascal be staring at?" I said, and I began to cast my eyes down on my person, to see if I could find any cause in my own appearance, that the miller and his lassie should thus treat me as a world's wonder.

"Ye were asking I think," he said, "after Charlie Cheap, of the Longrigs?"

"Yes," said I, "but his farm must be some miles from this. Perhaps as you are the miller of the neighbourhood, you can direct me the nearest road to it."

The burley scoundrel first lifted up his eyewinkers, which were clotted with flour, shook out about a pound of it from his bushy whiskers, and then burst into a laugh in my very face as loud as the neighing of a miller's horse.

"Ho, ho, hough!" grinned he, coughing upon me a shower of flour. "Is it possible, Dominie, that ye dinna ken me?" and opening a mouth at least as wide as his own hopper, I began to recognize the exaggerated features of Changeable Charlie.

"Well really," said I, gazing at his grin, and the hills of flour that arose from his cheeks,-"really this beats everything! and so Charlie, ye're now turned into a miller."

"As sure's a gun!" said he. "Lord bless your soul, Dominie! do you think I could bear to spread dung and turn up dirt all my life? no! I have a soul above that. Besides, your miller is a man in power. He is an aristocrat over the farmers, and with the power has its privileges too, for he takes a multre out of every man's sack, and levies

his revenues like a prime minister. No one gets so soon fat as those that live by the labour of others, as you may see; for the landed interest supports me by day, and my waterwheel works for me all night, so if I don't get rich now, the deuce is in it."

"I suppose," said I, following him into the mill, "you are just making a fortune." "How can I help it?" said he, "making money while I sleep, for I hear the musical click of the hopper in my dreams, and my bairns learn their lessons by the jog of it. I wish every man who has passed a purgatory at college, were just as happy as the miller and his wife. Is not that the case, Lizzy?" he added, addressing his better half, who now came forth hung round by children"as the song goes,"

"Merry may the maid be that marries the miller, For foul day and fair day, he's aye bringing till herHis ample hands in ilk man's pock,

His mill grinds muckle siller,
His wife is dress'd in silk and lawn,
For he's aye bringing till her."

"But dear me, Mr. Cheap," said I, "what was it that put you out of the farm, where I thought you were so happy, and making a fortune?"

"I was as happy as a man could be, and making money too, and nothing put me out of the farm, although I was quite glad of the change, but just a penny of fair debt, the which, you know, is a good man's case--and a little civil argument about the rent. But everything turned out for the best, for Willie Happer, the former miller, just ran awa the same week I got a dead bargain of the mill, and so I came in to reign in his stead. Am I not a fortunate man?"

"Never was a man so lucky," said I, "but do you really mean to be a waiter on a mill-hopper all your days?"

"As long as wood turns round and water runs; but Lizzy," he added to his wife, "what are you standing glowring there for, and me like to choke. Gang and fetch us a jug of your best treacle ale."

"It surely cannot be," said I to myself when I had left the mill, "that Changeable Charlie will ever adopt a new profession now, but live and die a miller." I was, however, entirely mistaken in my calculation, as I found before I was two years older; and though I have not time, at this present sitting, to tell the whole of Charlie's story-and have a strong suspicion that my veracity might be put in jeopardy, were I to condescend thereto, I am quite ready to take my oath, that after this I found him in not less than five different characters, in all of which he was equally happy and equally certain of making a fortune. Where the mutations of Charlie might have run to, and whether, to speak with a little agreeable stultification, he might not, like another remarkable man, have exhausted worlds and then imagined new, it is impossible to predicate, if Fortune had not in her usual injustice, put an end to his career of change, by leaving his wife Lizzy a considerable legacy.

The last character then that I found Charlie striving to enact, was that of a gentleman—that is, a man who has plenty of money to live upon, and nothing whatever to do. It did not appear, however, that Charlie's happiness was at all improved by this last change; for, besides that it had taken from him all his private joys, in the hope of one

day making a fortune, it had raised up a most unexpected enemy, in the shape of old father Time, whom he found it more troublesome and less hopeful to contend with, than all the obstacles that had formerly seemed to stand in his way to the making of an independent fortune.

MILTON AND SPENSER.
Sonnet to a Friend.

WE both are lovers of the poets old!
But Milton hath your heart,-and Spenser
mine ;-

So let us love them:-you, the song divine,And I, the tale of times gallant and bold. Be it yours to dream in Paradise,-behold The tresses of fair Eve roll down, and shine Over her bending neck in streams of gold;While her white hands the straggling roses Up the green bowers of Eden.—Mine be it to

twine

look

And troops of satyrs near a wooded brook, All dancing in a round;-and dimly see, In arbour green, Sylvanus, lying drowsily.

1817.

J. H. R.

When the legacy was first showered upon him, however, he seemed as happy under the dispensation, as he had been before under any other of his changes. In the hey-day of his joy, he sent for me to witness his felicity, and to give him my advice as to the spending of his money. This invitation I was thought-At the romantic land of Faery! less enough to accept, but it was more that I See Una sit under a shady tree, might pick up a little philosophy out of what I should observe, than from any pleasure that I expected, or any good that I was likely to do. When I got to his house, I was worried to death by all the fine things I was forced to look at, that had been sent to him from Jamaica, and all that from him and his wife I was forced to hear. I tried to impress him his money, in reference to many who sorely The Poet, after a seeming approval of suicide, from a concerning the good that he might do with wanted it; but I found that he had too little feeling himself to understand the feelings of others, and that affliction had never yet driven a nail into his own flesh, to open his heart to sympathy. Instead of entering into any rational plans, his wife and he laughed all day at nothing whatever, his children turned the house upside down in their ecstasy at being rich; and, in short, never before had I been so wearied at seeing people happy.

In all this, however, I heard not one single word of thankfulness for this unlooked-for deliverance from constant vicissitude, or one grateful expression to Providence, for being so unreasonably kind to this family; while thousands around them struggled incessantly, in ill-rewarded industry and unavailing anxiety. So I wound up the story of Changeable Charlie in reflective melancholy; for I had seen so inany who would, for any little good fortune, have been most thankful and happy, yet never were able to attain thereto; and I inclined to the sombre conclusion, that in this world the wise and virtuous man was often less fortunate, and generally less happy than the fool.

THE LAMENT.

BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

WHILE the moon laughs on the mountains,
While the stars smile in the fountains,
While from cot and castle glancing,
Comes light, with sounds of mirth and dancing;
I must tread, in mournful measure,
The footsteps of departed pleasure;
With soul in sorrow-heart a breaking,
The moments of past gladness reckon.
As with the dead in thought I wander,
I scarce can dream we are asunder;
The flowers we oft have prest are springing;
The stream by which we walked is singing;
Yon is our star: see how 'tis glowing,
The air with fragrance seems o'erflowing.
Nay, as night comes, and balmy shadows
Hang, like a veil, o'er groves and meadows,
I go-and to her bower obeisance
Make-it seems breathing of her presence,
And fancy, with a fond beguiling,
Brings her, all sweetness and all smiling-
She looks such looks-her ripe lips mutter
Such words as lips of love but utter-
'Tis sweet-though followed by much sadness,
To live o'er hours of bygone gladness.

EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO
BLESSING.
From the Latin of Palingenius.

BY CHARLES LAMB.

consideration of the cares and crimes of life, finally rejecting it, discusses the negative importance of existence, contemplated in itself, without reference to good or evil.

Of these sad truths consideration had-
Thou shalt not fear to quit this world so mad,
So wicked; but the tenet rather hold,
Of wise Calanus, and his followers old,
Who with their own wills their own freedom
wrought,

And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought
From this dark den of crime-this horrid lair
Of men, that savager than monsters are;
And scorning longer, in this tangled mesh
Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh,
Did with their desperate hands anticipate
The too, too slow relief of lingering fate.
And if religion did not stay thine hand,
And God, and Plato's wise behests, withstand,
I would in like case counsel thee to throw
This senseless burden off, of cares below.
Not wine, as wine, men choose, but as it came
From such or such a vintage: 'tis the same
With life, which simply must be understood
A blank negation, if it be not good.
But if 'tis wretched all- -as men decline
And loath the sour lees of corrupted wine-
'Tis so to be contemn'd. Merely TO BE
Is not a boon to seek, nor ill to flee,
Seeing that every vilest little Thing
Has it in common, from a gnat's small wing,
A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone,
And crumbling bark from trees. Unless TO BE,
And TO BE BLEST, be one, I do not see
In bare existence, as existence, aught
That's worthy to be loved, or to be sought.

• Talia si tecum reputas, animoque revolvis,
Non metues mundum hunc tam stultum, tamque
malignum,

Linquere; sed potius rectè fecisse Calanum
Atque alios dices, qui sese sponte necarunt,
Et sponte hanc scelerum caveam, stabulumque
ferarum,

Deseruere, manu cessantia fata vocantes,
Nec voluere ultra moribundum pascere corpus,
Et miseræ carni tanto servire labore.
Quod nisi religio obstaret, legesque Platonis,
Et Deus, hortarer te ultro dimittere vitam,
Et sortem insanam, et sceleratas linquere terras.
Non vinum, ut vinum, appetitur, sed tale, bonum
que.

Sic et vita, ut vita, est nil, nisi bona: quod si
Est misera, ut vinum corruptum, despiciatur.
Esse quidem, per se, nec amandum, nec fugien-

dum est:

Quippe habet hoc quamvis vilissima recula, vermis, Musca, lapis, cortex: nihil est optabile, demptà Conditione boni: nisi sit tale, esse, bonumque, Non video cur optari, cur possit amari.

Zod. Vit. Lib. 6, apud finem.

WHAT ART THOU, MIND?

BY THE AUTHOR OF CORN LAW RHYMES.'

GRIEF, sages tell us, hath a drooping wing,
And loves to perch upon the shaken mind,
To which she sings notes like the muttering
Of wintry rivers in the wintry wind,

Till health flies wing'd away, and leaves behind Shadows, illusions, dreams, and worse than dreams.

But Alfred dreams not-he is wide awake!
Light is around him, and the chime of streams;
Bees hum o'er sallows yet; and in the brake,
Coil'd like a chain of amethyst, the snake
Basks on the bank, above the streamlet's flow.
Oh, there are beauteous plumes, and many a bill,
And life, and love, beneath the ivy's bough!
The swallow dips his purple in the rill,
The lark sings in the cloud, and from the hill
The blackbird's song replies.-But Alfred's ear,
Nor splashing swallow hears, nor humming bee,
Nor warbling lark, nor ivy, shaken near
By brooding thrush, nor breeze-borne melody
Of chiming streams. He listens mournfully
To accents which the earth shall hear no more!
What art thou, Mind, that mirror'st things un-
seen,

Giv'st to the dead the smiles which erst they wore,

And lift'st the veil which fate hath cast between Thee and the forms which are not, but have been?

What art thou, conscious power, that hear'st the mute,

And feel'st th' impalpable? Thy magic brings
Back to our hearts the warblings of the lute,
Which long hath slept with unexisting things!
And shall we stand, doubting immortal wings,
In presence of the angels? Ask the worm,
And she will bid thee doubt; yet she is meek,
And wise-for when earth shakes, she shuns thy

form,

But never saw the morning on thy cheek,
The blue heav'n in thine eye, the lightning break
In laughter from thy lips. So, she denies
That colours are, even while the fragrant thorn
Blossoms above her! Weight, and shape, and
size,

She says, are real; but she laughs to scorn
The gorgeous rainbow, and the blushing morn,
And can disprove the glory of the rose!-
Yet doth she err, our limbless sister errs;
For on thy cheek, oh Man, the morning glows,
And fair is heaven's bright bow. The wayside

furze

Discredits her; the humblest weed that stirs
Its small green leaves, can undemonstrate all
Her proofs triumphant, that celestial light
But though the sunflower

Shines not at noon.
tall,
And tiniest moss, are clad in liveries bright,
Never, to her, canst thou disprove the night,
The starless night, in which she hath her home!
Then, marvel not, if death-bless'd spirits free
Wander, at times, beneath this heavenly dome,
On wings too bright for mortal eyes to see;
While, unperceived by them, as both by thee,
Forms more seraphic still around us fly,
And stoop to them and thee, with looks of love;
Or vainly strain the archangelic eye,
To gaze on holier forms above, above,
That round the throne of heaven's Almighty move.
Oh, look on Alfred! look!-the man is blind!
She whom he loved sleeps in her winding sheet,
Yet he beholds her, with the eyes of mind!
He sees the form which he no more shall meet,
But cannot see the primrose at his feet!
They mingle tears with tears, and sighs with
sighs,

And sobs with sobs; but words, long time, have

none;

She looks her soul into his sightless eyes,
And, like a passionate thought, is come and gone,
While at his feet, unheard, the bright rill bab-
bles on!

To hear you, one doth feel the bounding steed: You bring the hounds, and game, and all, to view

All scudding to the merry huntsman's cheer!
And yet I pity the poor crowned deer;
And always fancy 'tis by fortune's spite,
That lordly head of his he bears so high-
Like Virtue, stately in calamity,
And hunted by the human worldly hound-
Is made to fly before the pack, that strait
Burst into song at prospect of his death!
You say their throats make harmony; and yet
Their chorus scarce is music to my ear,
When I bethink me what it sounds to his;
Nor deem I sweet the note that rings the knell
Of the once merry forrester !

OLD ENOUGH, AND NOT TOO OLD.
BY CHARLES DANCE.

Is any one prepared to assert that he is, or ever was, of an age answering precisely to the description contained in the above text? In reference to reading, to experience, and to knowledge-the result of both, some are neither old enough, nor too old; some are not old enough, yet too old; and some are old enough and too old at the same time. Knowledge! What is knowledge?— That which all wish for, but none possess. He who has least thinks he has most; while he who has most, has only learned that he knows nothing. It is a ladder up which men toil and toil, but, ere they reach the top, their heads fail-they fall, and the grave receives them. It is a plank, one end of which rests on the vessel of life, while the other hangs suspended over the sea of eternity: men walk out upon it until they lose their balance, and then- -but hold-I am putting too serious a head to a comic tale: I have digressed when I ought to have progressed. For shame! I am old enough to know better, and yet not old enough to profit by it. The history of one man is, mutatis mutandis, the history of a million. Listen, then, gentle reader, to the biography of a million of thy fellow-creatures, and, if thou art not too old, turn it to account.

Peter Posthumous began the world under circumstances unfavourable to him in point of time. Had he been born one week sooner, that is, had he been seven days older, he would have been a rich man-at all events, a rich boy. He was the son of respectable parents, but his father had offended his father by a clandestine marriage; and the old gentleman, one of those "fathers with fiinty hearts," whom "no tears can melt," had disinherited his son, and, in order to insure his never enjoying any portion of his wealth, had bequeathed it to the eldest child of such marriage who should chance to be alive at the father's decease. Peter came into the world on the day week on which his father went out of it, and was therefore not quite old enough to obtain five thousand a year. "And will the poor child then get nothing?" inquired his anxious mother.

Nothing," was the answer.

Peter neither heeded nor heard it. He was not old enough-his time was not come. He remained in the country under his mother's care until his twelfth year, during

433

which time he was frequently invited to children's parties, given by the gentry of the neighbourhood, and always had his own consent to go; but he never went, because his mother thought him "rather too young.' At the age of twelve she removed with him to London, and placed him at a preparatory school. This proceeding was attended with some difficulty, owing to his mother's excessive tenderness, for she considered him scarcely old enough to encounter the hardships of a boy's school, and decidedly too old for a girl's. However, the matter was compromised by his being sent to a seminary for young gentlemen, superintended by two old ladies; and here he was destined to remain, in order that he might be unfitted for transfer to a foundation school, to which his mother had been promised that he should, in due time, be presented. Due time, however, was with Peter what "due notice" is in a play-bill-it never came. When the vacancy occurred which gave the governor of the school an opportunity of fulfilling his promise, it was discovered that Peter was two months too old to be admitted. His mother felt the disappointment more than he did. What was to be done? He was too old to remain longer where he was, and she could not afford to send him elsewhere at an increased expense. Home, therefore, he went once more, and at home he remained, coddling and coddled. Out-of-door amusement he was for some time a stranger to. He was now too old for children's parties, and not old enough for others. He was too young to be allowed to go to a theatre by himself, and too old, for reasons best known to his mother, to be seen about with her. A friend procured the promise of a colonial appointment for him; but when he presented himself for examination, he was politely bowed out on the score of youth. The which year he waited in expectation of this just carried him over the age at which he might else have been admitted into the counting-house of a merchant, who was a particular friend of his mother; but, unfortunately, also a particular man, with certain rules, which nothing could induce him to break. Peter at length, (and he was Peter at full length, for he had grown to be six feet high, and was too old to grow any longer,) finding that his mother's looking out for him did not answer, began to think of looking out for himself; and, as the state of subjection in which he was still kept, deprived him of other opportunities, he looked out of window. His looking out of his own window would have been harmless enough, but he contracted a habit of looking in at an opposite one, and thus laid the foundation of future troubles. At the second floor window of the house immediately facing the dwelling of Mrs. and Master Posthumous, there daily sat and looked and worked, Miss Ogle, the tall and only daughter of a wealthy and retired tradesman. By degrees, Miss Ogle worked less and looked more—after a while, there was a look between every stitch-and at length, it was evident, even to Peter, that she had an eye to him and none to her needle. There were some doubts as to the degree of consistency of Peter's head, but that his heart was soft is beyond question. He could not resist the fascination of Miss Ogle's eye --he was not old enough. Peter wrote three notes to Miss Ogle--Miss Ogle sent three answers to Peter-Peter submitted the whole