most frightful bad language) into some pit where Jack came with his smart couteau de chasse and whipped their brutal heads off. They would be going to devour maidens,

"But ever when it seemed

Their need was at the sorest,
A knight, in armor bright,

Came riding through the forest."

And down, after a combat, would go the brutal persecutor, with a lance through his midriff. Yes, I say, this is very true and well. But you remember that round the ogre's cave the ground was covered, for hundreds and hundreds of yards, with the bones of the victims whom he had lured into the castle. Many knights and maids came to him and perished under nis knife and teeth. Were dragons the same as ogres? Monsters dwelling in caverns, whence they rushed, attired in plate armor, wielding pikes and torches, and destroying stray passengers who passed by their lair? Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, ruffians, as they were, doubtless they ended by being overcome. But, before they were destroyed, they did a deal of mischief. The bones round their caves were countless. They had sent many brave souls to Hades, before their own fled, howling out of their rascai carcasses, to the same place of gloom.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that fairies, champions, distressed damsels, and by consequence ogres, have ceased to exist. It may not be ogreable to them (pardon the horrible pleasantry, but as I am writing in the solitude of my chamber, I am grinding my teeth-yelling, roaring, and cursingbrandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and, as it were, have become an ogre). I say there is no greater mistake than to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist. We all know ogres. Their caverns are round us, and about us. There are the castles of several ogres within a mile of the spot where I write. I think some of them suspect I am an ogre myself. I am not; but I know they are. I visit them. I don't mean to say that they take a cold roast prince out of the cupboard, and have a cannibal teast before me. But I see the bones lying bou the roads to their nouses, and in the areas and gardens. Politeness, of course, prevents me from making any remarks; but I know them well enough. One of the ways to know 'em is to watch the scared looks of the ogres' wives and children. They lead an awful life. They are present at dreadful cruelties. In their excesses those ogres will stab about, and kill not only strangers who happen to call in and ask a night's lodging, but they will outrage, murder, and chop up their own kin. We all know ogres, I say, and have been in their dens often. It is not necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer their guests the peculiar dish which they like. They cannot always get a Tom Thumb family. They eat mutton and beef too; and I dare say even go out to tea, and invite you to drink it. But I tell you there are num

bers of them going about in the world. And now you have my word for it, and this little hint, it is quite curious what an interest society may be made to have for you, by your determining to find out the ogres you meet there.

What does the man mean? says Mrs. Downright, to whom a joke is a very grave thing. I mean, madam, that in the company assembled in your genteel drawing-room, who bow here and there, and smirk in white neck-cloths, you receive men who elbow through life successfully enough, but who are ogres in private; men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering; cruel hectors at home, smiling courtiers abroad; causing wives, children, servants, parents, to tremble before them, and smiling and bowing as they bid strangers welcome into their castles. I say, there are men who have crunched the bones of victim after victim; in whose closets lie skeletons picked frightfully clean. When these ogres come out into the world, you don't suppose they show their knives, and their great teeth? A neat, simple white neck-clotn, a merry rather obsequious manner, a cadaverous look, perhaps, now and again, and a rather dreadful grin; but I know ogres very considerably respected: and when you hint to such and such a man, "My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom you appear to like, is, I assure you, a most dreadful cannibal;" the gentleman cries, "Oh, psha, nonsense! Dare say not so black as he is painted. Dare say not worse than his neighbors." We condone every. thing in this country-private treason, falsehood, flattery, cruelty at home, roguery, and double dealing. What! Do you mean to say in your acquaintance you don't know ogres guilty of countless crimes of fraud and force, and that knowing them you don't shake hands with them; dine with them at your table; and meet them at their own? Depend upon it, in the time when there were real live ogres in real caverns or castles, gobbling up real knights and virgins, when they went into the world-the neighboring market-town, let us say, or earl's castle-though their nature and reputation were pretty well known, their notorious foibles were never alluded to. You would say, “What, Blunderbore, my boy! How do you do? How well and fresh you look! What's the receipt you have for keeping so young and rosy?" And your wife would softly ask after Mrs. Blunderbore and the dear children. Or would it be, "My dear Humguffin! Try that pork. It is home-bred, home-fed, and, I promise you, tender. Tell me if you think it is as good as yours? John, a glass of Burgundy to Colonel Humguffin!" You don't suppose there would be any unpleasant allusions to disdisagreeable home-reports regarding Humguffin's manner of furnishing his larder? I say we all of us know ogres. We shake hands and dine with ogres. And if inconvenient moralists t 11 us we are cowards for our pains, we turn round with a tu quoque, or say that we don't meddle with other folk's affairs; that people are much less black than they are painted, and

So on

What! Won't half the county go to Ogrehain Castle? Won't some of the clergy say grace at dinner? Won't the mothers bring their daughters to dance with the young Rawheads? And if Lady Ogreham happens to die-I won't say to go the way of all flesh, that is too revolting-I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you aver, on your conscience and honor, that mothers will not be found to offer their young girls to supply the lamented lady's place? How stale this misanthropy is! Something must have disagreed with this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I dare say you would like to call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow; ogre at home, supple as a dancing master abroad, and shaking in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham gayety to conceal thy terror, lest I should point thee out:thou art prosperous and honored, art thou? I say thou hast been a tyrant and a robber. Thou hast plundered the poor. Thou hast bullied the weak. Thou hast aid violent hands on the goods of the innocent and confiding. Thou hast made a prey of the meek and gentle who asked for thy protection. Thou hast been hard to thy kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, monster! Ah, when shall little Jack come and drill daylight through thy wicked cannibal carcase? I see the ogre pass on, bowing right and left to the company; and he gives a dreadful sidelong glance of suspicion as he is talking to my lord bishop in the corner there.

Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In former times, and in children's books, where it is necessary to paint your moral in such large letters that there can be no mistake about it, ogres are made with that enormous mouth and ratelier which you know of, and with which they can swallow down a baby, almost without using that great knife which they always carry. They are too cunning nowadays. They go about in society, slim, small, quietly dressed, and showing no especially great appetite. In my own young days there used to be play ogres - men who would devour a young fellow in one sitting, and leave him without a bit of flesh on his bones. They were quite gentlemanlike-looking people. They got the young fellow into their cave. Champagne, patede foie gras, and numberless good things, were handed about; and then, having eaten, the young man was devoured in his turn. I believe these card and dice ogres have died away almost entirely as the hasty-pudding giants whom Tom Thumb overcame. Now, there are ogres in city courts who lure you into their dens. About our Cornish mines I am told there are many most plausible ogres, who tempt you into their caverns and pick your bones there. In a certain newspaper there used to be lately a whole column of advertisements from ogres, who would put on the most plausible, nay, piteous appearance, in order to inveigle their victims. You would read, "A tradesman, established for seventy years in the city, and known, and much respected by Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Baring Brothers, has pressing

need for three pounds until next Saturday. He can give security for half a million, and forty thousand pounds will be given for the use of the loan," and so on; or, "An influential body of capitalists are about to establish a company, of which the business will be enormous and the profits proportionately prodig. ious. They will require A SECRETARY, of good address and appearance, at a salary of two thousand per annum. He need not be able to write, but address and manners are absolutely necessary. As a mark of confidence in the company, he will have to deposit," etc.; or, "A young widow (of pleasing manners and appearance) who has a pressing necessity for four pounds ten for three weeks, offers her Erard's grand piano valued at three hundred guineas; a diamond cross of eight hundred pounds; and board and lodging in her elegant villa near Banbury Cross, with the best references and society, in return for the loan." I suspect these people are ogres. There are ogres and ogres. Polyphemus was a great, tall, oneeyed, notorious ogre, fetching his victims out of a hole, and gobbling them one after another. There could be no mistake about him. But so were the Sirens ogres-pretty blue-eyed things, peeping at you coaxingly from out of the water, and singing their melodious wheedles. And the bones round their caves were more numerous than the ribs, skulls, and thigh-bones round the cavern of hulking Polypheme.

To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the dapper champion of the pen; puffs boldly upon the horn which hangs by the chain; enters the hall resolutely, and challenges the big tyrant sulking within. We desy him to combat, the enormous roar ing ruffian! We give him a meeting on the green plain before his castle. Green? No wonder it should be green: It is manured with human bones. After a few graceful wheels and curvets we take our ground We stoop over our saddle. 'Tis but to kiss the locket of our lady-love's hair. And now the vizor is up: the lance is in rest (Gillott's iron is the point for me). A touch of the spur in the gallant sides of Pegasus. and we gallop at the great brute.

"Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!" And who are these who pour out of the castle? The imprisoned maidens, the maltreated widows, the poor old hoary grandfathers, who have been locked up in the dungeons these scores and cores of years, writhing under the tyranny of that ruffian! Ah, ye knights of the pen! May honor be your shield, and truth tip your lances! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to women. Be tender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him.

A PARABLE.

DR. H. MORE.

A certain hermit, not well satisfied with the ad ministration of this worl and its affairs, and the

divers occurrences of Divine Providence in relation to it, resolved to quit his cell and travel abroad to view the course of things, and make what observations he could, whereby to form a judgment of what disturbed him. He had not gone above half a day's journey before he was overtaken by a young stranger, who came up to him, and joined company with him, who soon insinuated himself into the hermit's affections, that he thought himself happy in having so soon met with so agreeable a companion. As their journey lay the same way, they agreed to eat and lodge always at one house, wheresoever they came; they traveled some few days before the hermit took notice of anything that occurred worthy his observation; but at length he could not but be concerned to see, that at a house where they were very kindly and generously entertained, his fellow-traveler, with whom in this time he had contracted an endear. ing friendship, at his departure stole a gold cup, and took it away with him. The hermit was astonished that his friend, whom he thought a devout Christian, should be guilty of theft and ingratitude, where he had received such particular obligations; he was, however, resolved to see what his behavior would be at other places before he inquired into it. At night they came to a house of as ill accommodation as the other was good, and where the owner was a man of so morose and inhospitable a temper, that they were a long time denied admittance, and, when received, were treated with the utmost surliness and brutality. Yet such was the different carriage of the young traveler to the morose host, that in the morning he rewarded his inhumanity with his gold cup, which he left behind him in one of the windows The hermit was not less surprised at this sight than the former, and could not fathom the mystery of so unequal a procedure; yet he still took no notice either of one action or the other.

The next night they, by agreement, returned to the house from whence the cup was taken. They were treated as courteously as before, but the return for it was more shocking and astonishing; for, at their leaving the place, the hermit saw his companion pri vately strangle a little child as it lay in the cradle, the only child of the family, and in whom all the temporal happiness of both father and mother were centered. Not withstanding this last action, he prevailed with himself to contain himself another day, and at night they came to a house of the best entertainment they had met with yet, the master of it doing everything, not only to accommodate them, but to divert them, and make their stay pleasant. In the morning, as the way they were to go was intri cate, he sent a faithful servant. for whom he had the greatest esteem for his fidelity, to conduct them. Thus they traveled for a while, till, coming to a bridge which crossed a deep and rapid stream, the young traveler, on a sudden, laid violent hands on the servant, and threw him over into the water and drowned him. Upon this the hermit could contain

no longer, but charged his companion with ingratitude, theft, and murder; he enlarged on the heinousness of his crimes in the barbarous requitals he had made his benefactors, and concluded he was resolved to leave so vile and wicked a companion, return to his cell, and confine himself there forever, rather than converse with mankind who committed such crimes without remorse of conscience.

But now behold as strange a sight of another kind! The young man, smiling at the honest zeal of the hermit, putting off his mortal disguise, appeared to him in the form and lustre of an angel of God, telling him he was sent to ease his mind of the perplexity and doubts he had so long labored under, as to the Divine Providence.--What you have seen, said he, seems astonishing and unaccountable; but, in reality, nothing could be more just and equitable; which, for want of your right understanding, has been so great an offense to you. To prove this, know, that the first man from whom the cup was taken, had the best compensation made for his kindnesses, the cup having occasioned great mischiefs while he had it: he is, indeed, courteous and hospitable; but has one great failing, which tarnishes those good deeds, that is, an inclination to drink more than becomes him; and especially when this cup was brought out; therefore, the best office I could do was to remove this temptation, that he might be brought to a better government of himself. When I had taken away this snare, I left it with the morose inhospitable man, as a means of his destruction, that by it he might fall into intemperance, diseases, and even death itself; for there is an enchantment in this cup, that whosoever possesses it will be in danger of being bewitched by it. But perhaps you think nothing can be said for my strangling the little innocent babe in the cradle, and in a place where I had been so civilly entertained. Know then, that this was done in great mercy to the parents, and no real hurt to the child who is now in happiness in heaven. This gentleman and his wife had hitherto lived in great reputation for their piety, justice, sobriety, and other Christian virtues; but, above all, their charity was eminent; divers of their sick and indigent neighbors owing their subsistence, next under God, to their munifi cence; but since the birth of this child, their minds have degenerated into a love of this world; they were no longer charitable, but their whole thoughts have been employed how to enrich themselves and leave a great fortune to this infant and its posterity, Hence I took this momentary life from the body of the child, that the souls of the parents might live forever: and I appeal to you if this was not the greatest act of kindness and friendship to them.—— There remains one action more to defend, my destroying the servant of a gentleman, who had used me so extraordinary civil, and who professed a great esteem for his fidelity; but this was the most faithful instance of gratitude I could show to one who used me so kindly; for this servant was in fact a

rogue, and had entered into a conspiracy to rob and kill his master -Now know, that Divine Providence is just, and the ways of God are not as your ways, nor his thoughts as your thoughts; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than your ways, and his thoughts than your thoughts.

At these words he vanished, leaving the good man to meditate on what had passed, and the reasons given for it; who hereupon, transported with joy and amazement, lifted up his hands and eyes to heaven, and gave glory to God, who had delivered him from his anxiety about the ways of Divine Providence; satisfied as to the wisdom of God's dealings, and those unseen reasons for them which surpass all human conception, he returned with cheer. fulness to his cell, and spent the residue of his life in piety and peace.

AGREEABLE COMPANIONS AND FLATTERERS.

RICHARD steele.

An old acquaintance who met me this morning seemed overjoyed to see me, and told me I looked as well as he had known me to these forty years; but, continued he, not quite the man you were when we visited together at Lady Brightly's. Oh! Isaac, those days are over. Do you think there are any such fine creatures now living as we then conversed with? He went on with a thousand incoherent circumstances, which, in his imagination, must needs please me; but they had the quite contrary effect. The flattery with which he began, in telling me how well I wore, was not disagreeable; but his indiscreet mention of a set of acquaintance we had outlived, recalled ten thousand things to my memory, which made me reflect upon my present condition with regret. Had he indeed been so kind as, after a long absence, to felicitate me upon an indolent and easy old age, and mentioned how much he and I had to thank for, who at our time of day could walk firmly, eat heartily, and converse cheerfully, he had kept up my pleasure in myself. But of all mankind, there are none so shocking as these injudicious civil people. They ordinarily begin upon something that they know must be a satisfaction; but then, for fear of the imputation of flattery, they follow it with the last thing in the world of which you would be reminded. It is this that perplexes civil persons. The reason that there is such a general outcry among us against flatterers, is, that there are so very few good ones. It is the nicest art in this life, and is a part of eloquence which does not want the preparation that is necessary to all other parts of it, that your audience should be your well-wishers; for praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations.

It is generally to be observed, that the person most agreeable to a man for a constancy, is he that has no

shining qualities, but is a certain degree above great imperfections, whom he can live with as his inferior, and who will either overlook or not observe his little defects. Such an easy companion as this, either now and then throws out a little flattery, or lets a man silently flatter himself in his superiority to him. If you take notice, there is hardly a rich man in the world who has not such a led friend of small consid. eration, who is a darling for his insignificancy. It is a great ease to have one in our own shape a species below us, and who, without being listed in our ser vice, is by nature of our retinue. These dependents are of excellent use on a rainy day, or when a man has not a mind to dress; or to exclude solitude, when one has neither a mind to that nor to company. There are of this good-natured order who are so kind to divide themselves, and do these good offices to many. Five or six of them visit a whole quarter of the town, and exclude the spleen, without fees, from the families they frequent. If they do not prescribe physic, they can be company when you take it. Very great benefactors to the rich, or those whom they call people at their ease, are your persons of no consequence. I have known some of them, by the help of a little cunning, make delicious flatterers. They know the course of the town, and the general characters of persons; by this means they will sometimes tell the most agreeable falsehoods imaginable. They will acquaint you that such one of a quite contrary party said, that though you were engaged in different interests, yet he had the greatest respect for your good sense and address. When one of these has a little cunning, he passes his time in the utmost sat. isfaction to himself and his friends; for his position is never to report or speak a displeasing thing to his friend. As for letting him go on in an error, he knows advice against them is the office of persons of greater talents and less discretion.

The Latin word for a flatterer (assentator) implies no more than a person that barely consents; and indeed such a one, if a man were able to purchase or maintain him, cannot be bought too dear. Such a one never contradicts you, but gains upon you, not by a fulsome way of commending you in broad terms, but liking whatever you propose or utter; at the same time is ready to beg your pardon, and gain. say you if you chance to speak ill of yourself. An old lady is very seldom without such a companion as this, who can recite the names of all her lovers, and the matches refused by her in the days when she minded such vanities-as she is pleased to call them, though she so much approves the mention of them. It is to be noted, that a woman's flatterer is generally elder than herself, her years serving to recommend her patroness's age, and to add weight to her complaisance in all other particulars.

We gentlemen of small fortunes are extremely necessitous in this particular. I have indeed one who smokes with me often; but his parts are so low, that all the incense he does me is to fill his pipe with me,

and to be out at just as many whiffs as I take. This is all the praise or assent that he is capable of, yet here are more hours when I would rather be in his company than that of the brightest man I know. It would be a hard matter to give an account of this inclination to be flattered; but if we go to the bottom of it, we shall find that the pleasure in it is something like that of receiving money which lay out. Every man thinks he has an estate of reputation, and is glad to see one that will bring any of it home to him; it is no matter how dirty a bag it is conveyed to him in, or by how clownish a messenger, so the money is good. All that we want to be pleased with flattery, is to believe that the man is sincere who gives it us. It is by this one accident that absurd creatures often outrun the most skillful in this art. Their want of ability is here an advantage, and their bluntness, as it is the seeming effect of sincerity, is the best cover to artifice.

It is, indeed, the greatest of injuries to flatter any but the unhappy, or such as are displeased with themselves for some infirmity. In this latter case we have a member of our club, that, when Sir Jeffrey falls asleep, wakens him with snoring. This makes Sir Jeffrey hold up for some moments the longer, to see there are men younger than himself among us, who are more lethargic than he is.

When flattery is practised upon any other con sideration, it is the most abject thing in nature; nay, I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he that envies him. You meet with fellows prepared to be as mean as possible in their conde. scensions and expressions; but they want persons and talents to rise up to such a baseness. As a coxcomb is a fool of parts, so a flatterer is a knave of parts.

The best of this order that I know is one who disguises it under a spirit of contradiction or reproof. He told an arrant driveller the other day, that he did not care for being in company with him, because he heard he turned his absent friends into ridicule. And upon Lady Autum's disputing with him about something that happened at the Revolution, he replied with a very angry tone: "Pray, madam, give me leave to know more of a thing in which I was actually concerned, than you who were then in your nurse's arms."

LIFE IN AS-YOU-LIKE.

DOUGLAS JERROLD.

As-you-like is a monarchy; a limited monarchy. At the time I dwelt there, the crown was worn by King Abdomen, almost the greatest man that ever walked. His natural accomplishments were many, he was held to make a more melodious sneeze than any man in the universe. He invented buttons, the people of As-you-like before this time tying their clothes about them with strings. He also invented quart goblets. He was the son of King Stubborn, known as the King of the Shortwools.

After the king came the nobility; that is the men who had shown themselves better than other men, and those virtues were worked into their titles.

Thus there was the Duke of Lovingkindness; the Marquis of Sensibility; the Earl of Tenderheart; the Baron of Hospitality, and so forth. Touching, too, was the heraldry of As-you-like. The royal arms were, charity healing a bruised lamb, with the legend, Dieu et paix. And then for the coach-panels of the aristocracy, I have stood by the hour, at holiday times, watching them; and tears have crept into my eyes, and my heart has softened under their delicious influence. There were no lions, griffins, panthers, lynxes-no swords or daggers-no short verbal incitements to man-quelling. Oh, no! One nobleman would have for his bearings a large wheaten loaf, with the legend-Ask and have. Another would have a hand bearing a purse, with the questionWho lacks? Another would have a truckle-bed painted on his panels, with the words-To the tired and footsore. Another would display some comely garment, with -New clothes for rags. Oh! I could go through a thousand of such bearings, all with the prettiest quaintness showing the soft fleshly heart of the nobleman, and inviting, with all the brief simplicity of true tenderness, the hungry, the poor, the weary, and the sick to come, feed, and be comforted. And these men were the nobility of As-you-like; nor was there even a dog to show his democratic teeth at them.

The church was held in deepest reverence. Happy was the man who, in his noon-day walk, should meet a bishop; for it was held by him as an omen of every manner of good fortune. This beautiful superstition arose, doubtless, from the love and veneration paid by the people to the ministers of religion, who from their tenderness, their piety, their affection towards their flocks, were looked upon as the very porters to heaven. The love of the people placed in the hands of their bishops heaps of money; but as quickly as it was heaped, it was scattered again by the ministers of the faith, who were thus perpetually preaching goodness and charity at the hearths of the poor, and the poor were every hour lifting up their hands and blessing them. It was not enough that the bishops were thus toilsome in their out-door work of good; but in the making of new laws and amending of old ones, they showed the sweetness, and, in the truest sense, the greatness of the human spirit. During my stay in As-you-like, what we should call the House of Lords, but what in that country was called the House of Virtues, debated on what some of their lordships deemed a very pretty case to go to war upon; and, sooth to say, for a time the House of Virtues seemed to forget the active benevolence that had heretofore been its moving principle. Whereupon the bishops one by one arose, and from their lips there flowed such heavenly music, in their eyes there sparkled such apostolic tears, that all the members of the House of Virtues rose, and with one