at pleasure-another peculiarity about him; no second man of his regiment having spared his chin from the razor. After seeing the soldiers come in, I did not immediately return home; and when I got to my door, the individual I have been describing was standing at it with his comrade, a lad scarce one and twenty. He handed me his billet with a grave but well-mannered bow, asking if he had come to the right number. I told him all was right, so far; but that I was exempt from a billet, inasmuch as my house was a furnished one, and that my landlord was to provide him with accommodation for the night. He replied, that he knew no mere lodgers in a furnished house could be called on to receive him, and asked how far off was my landlord's residence. I said, half a league in the country. He shook his head, and continued to say, still with the utmost civility, if not blandness, that he and his young friend were too tired to take to the road again, after a long march, and in such bad weather (the poor fellows were, indeed, soaked with rain, and the mud clung about their feet and legs, almost up to their knees;) but they would wait till I could send a messenger to my landlord for instructions; and, if I could allow them to sit down at my kitchen fire in the meantime, they would very much thank me. While he spoke, he leaned his back against the wall of the house, and having reversed his musket, put its muzzle on his shoe, and rested his hands on its butt, and his cheek on them. His manner, his voice, his most respectable expression, and above all, I believe, his large, round, mild, blue eyes, made a conquest of my precision and of my praiseworthy attachment to a franc or two. I rung at the door, after a moment's pause, and telling him he should wait for nothing at my kitchen fire, but for his dinner, I ushered him in and his jeune ami to Mademoiselle Phrosyne, who received her guests in a great fluster, but still with the due number of curtsies, in answer to their bows; and then she put a chair for each at opposite corners of the fire; and so behold me the hospitable host of as we are told-two of the "natural enemies” of old England. I lingered in the kitchen some time. My grave soldier sat down at once, crossing his arms on his knees, and poking his body and head towards the fire. His youthful comrade saved him the trouble of putting his piece in a corner and his cap on a table, and had a kind" Thank you, Pierre," for his good nature. The lad then pulled off his own gaiters in a twinkling, and, tucking up his muddy trowsers, ran to the kitchen pump as naturally as if he had been in the house all his life, and set about washing, over the sink, the first-named articles of dress. Phrosyne offered him her black paste soap, but he declined it, laughingly, and while proceeding in his work, said he dared her to wash his gaiters as well with soap as he should without it; at which Mademoiselle laughed too, while busy over her saucepans; it was not the first pleasantry they had interchanged, and Phrosyne was a youthful cuisiniere, and did not shame her name for comeliness-in fact, I saw she was in for a pleasant evening, with one of her guests, at least; but the other conti nued silent and melancholy. He did not hesitate, indeed, to answer my questions promptly and politely, but he never spoke of his own accord. Before I left the kitchen, he had begun to take off his gaiters, in imitation of Pierre; but the lad insisted on having them to wash after his own, adding, "and for this evening at least, Louis, I will work for two, at the muskets, the trowsers, shoes, and all.” "Are you and Pierre relations?" I asked." No, Sir," he answered, "but," smiling for the first time, as he pulled Pierre's ear, who was kneeling to get off the gaiters, we have been friends nearly a year, ever since the day he joined the regiment." 66 All this interested me, and I went up stairs to interest my wife by telling it over to her. We agreed to do something to make the two men comfortable. A good fire was ordered in their bed-room, at which they might sit to dine, after having cleaned their arms, accoutrements, and clothes. Hours of the evening wore away, and we did not hear their voices or steps in the house they only sent up their thanks for Monsieur's kind attention. I inquired from time to time how they were occupied; and when I thought they might be at leisure, went down to their sleeping-room to try and get the elder of them into conversation. He was alone; sitting over the fire, which he had suffered to decay, in the same bent position he had adopted in the kitchen. I believe he slumbered; for my entrance did not make him raise his head; so, not wishing to disturb him, after his weary march, I turned into the kitchen to his more lively comrade, whose laugh, mingled with that of Phrosyne and of her fellow servant, attracted me thither. I spoke to Pierre about his friend, and pointedly noticed his melancholy. In a few minutes I learned the cause of it. Before drawing his mauvais numèro as a conscript, seven years before, Louis had loved" not wisely"-Rosalie, the only daughter of the richest man of his village-the miller no less. Rosalie loved him in return, but her father was obdurate. They met in secret once too often: Rosalie became an unwedded mother. But before that event, and while her condition was known to the whole village, Louis again, and repeatedly, solicited the miller to allow her to become his wife, and again and again he was refused. He heard he was a father; he asked permission to see his child; it was denied him. The morning the baby was baptized in the church, he suddenly appeared amid the family group who surrounded it; kissed it, and claimed it, and insisted that it should bear his name, of which its stern grandfather wished to deprive it. The clergyman was compelled to yield him his right. A few days after he was a conscript; and," continued Pierre, "they tell me, that since the first day he came to the regiment, now seven years ago, he has been always, and to every one what Monsieur has seen he is to-day-civil, kind, but very sad. But this does not interfere with his duties.He is one of the best soldiers, if not the very best soldier among us. I believe him to be the very best. A good, and true, and most useful friend he has been to me since I joined the 27th, and I love 66 him like a brother. Everybody loves him-aye, and respects him too; men and officers, all the same; and it is pleasure to me, when he will let me do a hand's turn for him, to save him trouble. I wonder will his Rosalie be true to him for another year-after which he may return home to see her and his child. I hope she will." "I hope so, too," sighed Phrosyne. "And I," echoed Sophie. "And I, Pierre," said I, 66 with all my heart." "Thank you, a thousand times, Monsieur," replied Pierre, his eyes glowing. Now, were I writing what did not really happen, word for word, and did I not dislike disturbing the honest facts in my own mind, I could very easily go on to say that I had been travelling by chance to Rosalie's village, about a year after, and just in the nick of time to witness the nuptials of her and Louis. But I cannot bear to lie, even poetically, on this subject. The truth is, I know nothing more about it; and to the truth I limit myself. That I continue to hope what we all hoped that evening round the kitchen fire, need scarce be doubted. Nor have I ever seen Louis since; he had gone to bed before I left the kitchen. I heard from him, however, in the shape of the following note, handed to me by Sophie, after the departure of him and Pierre, next morning, long before day-break : The two French soldiers below thank the good English Monsieur of this house, for unexpected and unusual kindness, after a long march, on a bad day. May God bless him and Madame, and les petits enfans.” · 66 DEATH. "Man comes into the world like morning mushrooms, soon throwing up their heads into the air, and conversing with their kindred of the same produce and soon they turn unto death and forgetfulness.” JEREMY TAYLOR. : "Shall we rob ourselves of content because our bodies are mortal? or shall we esteem it the best assistance of our friends to weep?" Such was the enquiry, which one of the elder brethren of English literature demanded of his reason; and, although we of the present day, might feel inclined, from motives purely philosophical, to reply to it with a negative, yet, if we follow up the feelings excited by the question, into the general detail of human action,-if we trace the windings of inward thought, and enquire into the various degrees of which the affections of mankind are, in general, bound and. attached to the earth whence we tread ;-if we bring honesty and candour to the test of a more minute examination, we shall be inclined to admit, that the love of life is the strongest, the most invincible principle by which not only man, but every living creature is actuated. To descant upon the bourne of all our hopes, and fears, and wishes; to enlarge upon the conclusion which the word of the Most High has decreed to the sorrow and the pride of man; and to dwell upon the cold and remorseless senselessness, with which the great enemy of our species, who, though he tarry in his approaches, tarrieth not long-year after year severeth some link in the golden chain of friendship, and beareth it away with him to a dark and dismal region, where curiosity never laboureth to return, and where imagination is perplexed by the melancholy gloominess of its own conceptions, would be, indeed, an arduous task ; but there is scarcely a writer, from the earliest period to which we can trace the use of letters, who has not, at some period of life, contemplated the awful moment of its close, and dwelt upon the same with an earnestness and a solemnity peculiar to the subject. That, unto all men over whom time has drawn the mantle of past centuries, and that, unto those who now people the earth,as well as to the earth itself, there will, in an awful hour, sound the thunders of their final destiny, is a truth, which, since the sentence, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return," presumption never dared deny, nor infidelity attempt to disprove. There was a time, when sinless man walked forth in all the confidence of his innocency, over the paradise of God ; and there, also, was a period, when sinful man gathered up the heavy burthen of mortality, and, casting over every joy and every grief, which had passed in succession from his view, the dark mantle of oblivion, laid him down in his chamber in the grave. Such a period is ours; and such will be the termination of our joys and sorrows-our hopes and fears. A few short years, and sorrows' wave But journeying to some brighter sphere, But, then, the grave itself-the dark, clamp, desolate, rapacious grave! with what different feelings do its numerous victims prepare to descend into its dim recesses! Some are buoyed up with hope. others cast down, shaken, almost maddened by fear, and hopeless, unceasing, overwhelming despair: Some seek its gloomy protection with joy others descend into its cold profundity with sorrow, and others with calm indifference. The man of "three score years and ten," the good and pious patriarch, who has lived throughout his brief span, subjected to the varied good and ill of poor humanity, will go down into the grave in peace, and with the hope of a renewed and blessed existence in eternity. The strong and lusty sinner, with defiance on his lip,—and boldness-the boldness of despair and guilt upon his unbending brow, will still wrestle rebelliously with the mortal stroke, till the arrow hath pierced his vitals. The young mother, although sustained and elevated by holy and fervent hope,-soothed, even in the dark hour of departing life, by a consciousness of her own meek virtues,-think you, will she leave her weeping husband, her darling babes, the bright sunshine of youth, the sweet hopes, and fears, and joys,-aye! or even the griefs of mortality, unmoved ?-Oh! no! no! She would willingly forego her doom, even were it only for a short season,-and although that short season were to afford nought but the bitterness of life the wormwood and the gall! The man of sorrows, whose life has been but sparingly" chequered o'er" with the good things of this world; whose spirit has been bruised and broken by the unfeeling hardheartedness of his fellow men ;-who has languished on in poverty, and nakedness, and hunger ;-without friends-for who will befriend the wretched? without kindred-for who will acknowledge the hapless? without a single being to whom he could apply for succour, or from whom he could expect even the uncostly balm of a kind word ;-to such an one-and many such there are the grave is as a bed of down-" Soft as the breath of even," where he may rest in peace, secured, at length, from the wants, and woes, and bitter humiliations of poor humanity. Some green and grassy mound shall cover, Above shall shine the bright blue sky. Although in life his heart's in sadness, The spot where now 'tis laid, in gladness, Shall smile, though weakened with a tear! And, then, what a blessed thing is the quiet death of the sweet infant! "Pure as the snow-flake ere it falls, and takes the stain of earth, The sinless soul of the cherub child, that dies on its mother's breast, wings its way to heaven, unconscious of the joys it might have shared here, as well as of the many, many miseries of which it might have been the partaker. This can hardly be called death.It is but the calm, soft ebbing of the gentle tide of life, to flow no more in the troubled ocean of existence; it is but the removal of a |