and James's furnishes a fresh serpent, which the lover is but too delighted to be allowed to clasp round the lady's delicate wrist.

I detect you, male reader, smiling in your sleeve! You, too, then have bought your experience-Well, I do not know that it could be purchased in a more delightful manner. ends my little history of an advertisement.

And thus

WESTMINSTER CLOISTERS.

THE thirteenth day of June-'twas hot enough
For one of those old summer noons, before
They meddled with the calendar, and nipped
Us of a fortnight's comfortable sun-

Thanks give I to the monks with all my soul
For their cool cloister roof, and lay me down
Full length along the mouldering gothic bench,
Envying almost that ancient abbot stern,
Gervatias de Blois, who close beneath
Lies cut in stone. What might one better do
On sultry days, than lie upon one's back,
Along a cold stone flag, clothed all in stone,
In full straight folds down to one's very feet;
Whilst pendant gossamers, from bosses hung,
Rising and falling with slow stately swing,
Wave one asleep; or, as the eve came on,
Marking the bats across the cloister grass
Hurl themselves edgeways with delicious rush:
Such were cool dreaming, for the weather fit.

That old De Blois, he was a priest, indeed,
Clutching his crosier on his carvéd grave
As though he'd rule them from his very tomb.
The monks who stole here from refectory
To cool an after dinner's bursting paunch,

Crept curve-wise round some yard or two, in awe
Of the old Norman's irritable bones;

Though for the love they bore him, had they dared,
His very name, and date, they would have scuffled out.

Abbot and priest, they've time enough, at last,
In purgatorial graves to clear themselves.
Each slab we step on's answered from below,
By the fat marrow of some ancient monk,
Who yet grins up in hate through brass and stone,
As over-head some evangelic dean

Trips past in haste, to fill with serious look
The chair at " Pastoral Aid" Society.
Pastoral aid, indeed! listen beneath,

And hear them crunch their metacarpal bones,
As they would fix him there in grisly clutch,
His weasand clipping with their rosaries,
To stop his scheming 'gainst the Church's good.
But hark! the diapason's throbbing bass

Trembles through windows pictured with the saints.
-Now by the sweat of tempted Anthony,

Were I the veriest mummy of a priest,
The sacred wafer in my gorge would rise,
To listen to these hated heretics!

"Tis Tallis day, and nimble-fingered Turle,
Is torturing with stern Lutherian hymn
The rare organ's fine old Catholic breath.

THOUGHTS ABOUT LONDON BEGGARS.

QUIET streets are great godsends to beggars. Your great thoroughfares are hard-hearted things. People in the bustle and crowd won't unbutton their pockets-but your quiet streets, cul de sacs especially, seem made for beggars, and late-in-the

morning ash-boxes. The beggar has such a claim upon the very last house in the street; he has come all the way to beg your charity, with a mournful whine over the rails; one feels he has had faith in the charity of the last house (at least a person of fine susceptibility, such as we profess to be, would feel so), and dependence on the kindness of human nature, we fancy does not always go unrewarded. We have lived in a quiet street now for some time, and are up to all their doubles, and, as in most other things, we have our favourites among them, however sneaking our regard might be for the whole family. Beggars divide themselves in several classes -the humorous, the poetical, the sentimental, the dodgey, and the sneaking. The humorous beggar is for our money; we cannot get a sight of him often, however, for, like a pair of skates, he is only of use in a hard frost, aided perhaps by a driving sleet. On such a day, whilst a man is making himself a peculiarly warm triangle before the fire, in the way in which Englishmen are so accustomed to, and in the true spirit of Christian feeling, pitying the poor devils their red noses as they pass-on such a day we may be pretty sure of our prime favourites. There is no mistaking them; we hear their stentorian lungs in the far-off streets louder and louder, until they burst upon our sight, with bare feet, naked chests, white ducks, and navy-cut jackets-shipwrecked seamen, just cast ashore from St. Giles's. Bravely against the cutting sleet and splitting frost do they struggle up the road. "Tis worth a penny, sitting by one's fire, to see the self-torture of the rascals. -their feet well nigh sticking to the freezing flags. Let them pass on, to make soft the hearts of mothers who have sons at sea. They are jolly dogs, and worth their money to those who laugh before they give.

Again, that old grumbling song rambling up and down, gusty as the wind round a church corner! The day is fine, and we may have an out-of-door peep at the picturesque singer-the ship upon his head-the cubby-house upon his back-it seems all cast in one-as if they had been out in a great heat, and had