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to thank the Master of Life for so excellent a boon. I will devote my time to study how I can best promote her happiness, while she is permitted to remain; and our lives shall roll away like a pleasant stream through a flowery valley.' Thus also has the father prayed for his son, the mother for her daughter, the wife for her husband, the sister for her brother, the lover for his mistress, the friend for his bosom companion, until the sounds of mourning, and the cries of the living have pierced the very recesses of the dead. Among those who have called for their departed friends, have been many who were unkind to them while living. These have not failed to promise the most endearing conduct should their relatives be allowed to return.

"The Great Spirit has, at length, consented to make a trial of their sincerity, by sending us upon the earth at a season of coldness and general scarcity. He has done this to see how we should be received, coming as strangers, no one knowing from whither. For it was necessary that this severity of proof should be exacted. Three moons were allotted us to make the trial, and if, during that time, no irksomeness had been evinced, no angry passions excited at the place where we should take up our abode, all those in the land of spirits, whom their relatives had desired to return, would have been restored. We had already passed more than half the time assigned to us. Had your wife maintained those feelings of unmixed generosity and kindness which heretofore marked her conduct, the ransom would have been complete. As soon as the leaves had begun to bud our mission would have been successfully terminated. But it is now too late. Our trial is finished; and we are called to the pleasant fields whence we came. It is not for those who remain there, but for you that are left upon earth, that we grieve.

"Brother-It is proper that one man should die to make room for another, who is born in his place. Otherwise the world would be filling to overflowing. It is just that the goods, gathered by one, should be left to be divided amongst others; for in the land of spirits there is no want. There, there is neither sorrow nor hunger, death nor pain. Pleasant fields spread before the eye, filled with game, and with birds of handsome shapes. Every stream has good fish in it, and every hill is crowned with groves of fruit-trees,

sweet and pleasant to the taste. All kinds of games have been invented to amuse, and instruments to play upon. It is not here, brother, but there, that men begin truly to live. It is not for those that rejoice through those pleasant groves, but for you that are left behind, that we weep.

"Brother-Take our thanks for your hospitable treatment. Regret not our departure. Fear not evil. Thy luck shall still be good in the chase; and a bright sky prevail over thy lodge.— Mourn not for us, for no corn will spring up from tears; but join our lamentations for the fate of mankind."

The spirits ceased: but the hunter had no power over his voice to reply. As they continued their address he saw a light gradually beaming from their faces, and a blue vapour filled the whole lodge with an unnatural light. As soon as the females ceased, darkness gradually prevailed. He listened, but the sobs of the spirits had ceased. He heard the door of his tent open and shut; but he never saw more of his mysterious visitors. But he found the success which they had promised him. He became a celebrated hunter, and never wanted for any thing necessary to his ease. He became the father of many children, all of whom grew up to manhood: and health, peace, and long life, were the rewards of his hospitality.

Table Talk.

MARRIAGE.-The more married men you have (says Voltaire), the fewer crimes there will be. Examine the frightful columns of your criminal calendars; you will there find a hundred youths executed for one father of a family. Marriage renders men more virtuous and more wise. The father of a family is not willing to blush before his children.

HISTORY OF A SKULL. A recent number of a Berwick paper says:"We have now lying before us a human skull, which local tradition affirms to be the skull of one of the sons of Sir Alexander Seaton, deputy-governor of Berwick, who were hanged by Edward the Third on the south bank of the river, still called Hanging-dyke-neuk, which fronts the castle. We have never seen any good reason for denying the commission of this piece of atrocious perfidy. Be this as it may, the ingenuity of all the historians in the world will not convince the inhabitants of this part of

the country that it is not a fact; and the history of the skull is curious. The late Joyce James, an aged brickmaker, who died several years ago, at the advanced age of nearly a hundred, remembered a cairn on Hanging-dykeneuk, which was taken down more than a century ago, that was known as Seaton's cairn, and when displaced, underneath were found two skulls. Afterwards they were purchased by the late Admiral Stow's father, and remained in his possession nearly fifty years. They were then deposited in the old Tweedmouth workhouse: and each skull had two holes perforated through it, as if with a gimlet or some such instrument. For many years there has been no trace of them, till lately one of them was found in a garret of the said workhouse, which is now a dwelling-house, and in the repairs of the house it had been built into the wall. An aged fisherman who has completed his fourscore years and ten, described the skulls as he saw them when a youth, with the two small holes in the centre, and on its being produced before him he readily recognized it as one of the two he had seen more than seventy years ago. The skull is at least a curiosity."

UNEXPECTED RENCONTRE.-The Emperor Alexander was accustomed to travel with the utmost rapidity. On a certain occasion his majesty, fatigued by having remained a long time in his carriage, alighted, and, unaccompanied by any of his suite, pursued his way on foot through a village that lay before him. The Autocrat of all the Russias was attired in his usual travelling costume, a military great-coat without any particular mark of distinction. Desirous of obtaining some information respecting the road he was pursuing, he accosted a military looking personage, who stood smoking a cigar at the door of a house. To each of the emperor's questions the stranger replied in the most uncourteous manner; and by way of terminating the ungracious parley "Allow me to ask," said Alexander, 66 what may be your military rank ?”_ "Guess."" Perhaps, sir, you may be a lieutenant?"—"Higher, if you please." "Captain ?"-"Another step. "Major?"-"Go on, go on."-"Lieut. Colonel, I presume?"-" You have hit it at last, though not without effort." These words were pronounced in a tone of arrogance; and the several answers in the preceding dialogue, were accompanied by a cloud of smoke puffed full in the emperor's face. "Now comes

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my turn, good Mr. Traveller,” said the officer: "Pray, what may be your military rank?""Guess."-" Well, then, at the first glance, I should say Captain ?"-"Higher, if you please.' "Lieut.-Colonel ?"-" Pray go on.' "Colonel?"-"A little higher, if you please." (The officer upon this threw away the stump of his cigar.) MajorGeneral ?". Another step, if you please." (The officer now stood immoveable at 'attention.' "Your excellence is then Lieut.-General ?”. "You are not quite up to the mark.". "In that case I have the honour to address myself to his Serene Highness the Field-Marshal?"—"Do me the favour, Lieut.-Colonel, to make another effort." -"Ah, sire!” cried the officer with emotion, "will your Majesty deign to pardon me? But could I imagine that the Emperor "I am not offended; and to prove it, if you have a favour to ask I will grant it with plea

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SPANISH LOYALTY.-A brother of the Cende de Santa Cruz, an archdeacon of Cordova, had no sooner heard the betrayal of the Spanish galleys and treasure to the enemy, than he hastened to the baptismal register of the city, and tore out the leaf which contained his brother's name, indignantly exclaiming, "May no record of so vile a wretch remain amongst men!" At the court of Philip a country priest obtained an audience of the queen, and offered her one hundred and twenty pistoles from a small village with only the same number of houses. "My flock," he added,

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are ashamed at not being able to send a larger sum; but they entreat your majesty to believe that in the same purse are one hundred and twenty hearts faithful even to death."

Lord Mahon's Hist. of the War in Spain. CHOUANS.-The distinction between the "Chouans" and the "Vendeans," two parties so often mentioned in the history of republican France, is not very generally understood. Under the salt tax laws of the old Government there was much smuggling and a great contraband trade in that article. The salt smugglers used to go about in parties at night, when they made use of a noise imitating the scream of the chouette, or little owl, as a signal to each other to escape the revenue officers if the party was not strong, or to assemble if they felt themselves in sufficient force for resistance. The signal was afterwards used for political purposes in the first revolution, and hence the republi

cans used to give the name of chouettes as an appellation of contempt; which, by a transition familiar to the French language, afterwards changed to chouans. The Chouans were the refuse of the Vendeans, who united with troops of marauders. Unlike the Vendeans, who could not bear nocturnal fighting, the Chouans made all their attacks by night. They never deserved the name of soldiers; they were smugglers transformed into banditti.

TRIBOULET. Of this King's Fool, it is related by M. du Radier, in his 'Recreations Historiques,' that a nobleman of distinction having threatened to cause him to be whipped to death for mentioning him with too much freedom, Triboulet complained grievously of the menace to Francis I. "Do not be afraid," was the answer, "for, should any one presume to kill you, I will have the murderer hanged up in a quarter of an hour after."-"Ah!" cried Triboulet, "I wish your Majesty would order him to be hanged up a quarter of an hour before." The King's fools are supposed to have been supplied from Troyes, in Champagne, as in the records of that town there is a letter preserved from Charles V. of France, signifying to the Magistrates the death of his fool, and ordering them to send him another, according to ancient custom. Du Radier gives an inscription on a monument extant in 1766, of which the following is a translation:-" Here lies Thevenin de St. Legier, Fool to our Sovereign Lord the King, who died on the 11th July, in the year of grace 1374. Pray for his soul."

MORBID SENSIBILITY.-"I am convinced," says Dr. James Johnson, "that the great majority of those complaints which are considered purely mental, such as irritability and irascibility of temper, gloomy melancholy, timidity and irresolution, despondency, &c. might be greatly remedied, if not entirely removed, by a proper system of temperance, and a very little medicine. On this account, medical men often have it in their power to confer an immense boon of happiness on many valuable members of society, whose lives are rendered wretched by morbid sensitiveness of the mind, having its unsuspected source in morbid sensibility of the stomach, bowels, or the nervous system. From numerous facts, indeed, which have come within my own observation, I am convinced that many strange antipathies, disgusts, caprices of temper, and eccentricities, which are

considered solely as obliquities of the intellect, have their source in corporeal disorder. By a temporary gastric derangenient many an enterprize of " vast pith and moment" has had its " current turned awry," and "lost the name of action." The philosopher and the metaphysician, who know but little of these reciprocities of mind and matter, have drawn many a false conclusion from, and erected many a baseless hypothesis on, the actions of men. Many a happy and lucky thought has sprung from an empty stomach! Many an important undertaking has been ruined by a bit of undigested pickle-many a well-laid scheme has failed in execution from a drop of green bile-many a terrible and merciless edict has gone forth in consequence of an irritated gastric nerve!"

THE AURORA BOREALIS. -The first appearance of the Aurora Borealis in our hemisphere greatly alarmed the citizens of Bristol, who superstitiously imagined that it foreboded some approaching national calamity. A manuscript, preserved among the records of that city, informs us, that " on the 17th October, 1564, there were seen in the sky beams as red as fire out of a furnace, and after that there followed a plague which lasted a whole year, and carried off upwards of two thousand persons."

E. M. A.

FLIGHT OF CHARLES THE SECOND AFTER THE BATTLE OF WORCESTer. -Charles, in his progress towards Bristol, was pursued by a party of the enemy to the new ferry over the Severn. He rode through Shire Newton, and crossed the Severn at Chiswell pit, on the Gloucestershire side. The boat had scarcely returned before a body of the republicans, amounting to sixty men, followed him to the Black Rock, and threatening them with instant death if they refused, compelled the ferrymen to take them across. The boatmen were royalists, and left them on a reef called English Stones, which is separated from the Gloucestershire side by a lake, fordable at low water; but the tide, which had just turned, flowed in with great rapidity, and they were all drowned in attempting to cross. Cromwell, when informed of this disaster, abolished the ferry, and it was not renewed until the year 1748. The renewal occasioned a law-suit between the family of St. Pierre and the guardians of the Duke of Beaufort. In the course of the suit, documents were produced which tended to confirm this anecdote.

E. M. A.

LORD GEORGE DIGBY bore a conspicuous part in the transactions of the reign of Charles the Second, and was remarkable for his talents and inconsistences. "His life," says Walpole, "was one contradiction. He wrote against popery, and embraced it; he was a zealous opposer of the court and a sacrifice for it; was conscientiously converted in the midst of his prosecution of Lord Strafford, and most unconscientiously a prosecutor of Lord Clarendon. With great talents he always hurt himself and his friends; with romantic bravery he was always an unsuccessful commander. He spoke for the test act though a Roman Catholic; and addicted himself to the study of astrology on the birth-day of true philosophy."

E. M. A.

ENGLISH POETRY From Cowper may be deduced the commencement of the third great era of modern English literature, since it was in no small measure to the inspiration of his task, that our countrymen are indebted, if not for the existence, yet certainly for the character of the new school of poetry, established first at Bristol, and afterwards transferred to the Lakes, as scenery more congenial and undisturb ed for the exercises of contemplative genius. Southey, Coleridge, and Woodsworth started almost contemporaneously in the same path to fame-a new one, indeed, untrodden and entangled with thorns, or obstructed with stones, yet in many parts fertile and diversified ; blooming with all the beauty, and breathing with all the fragrance of the richest and most cultivated enclosures of the Muses. The minds and the feelings, the passions and prejudices of men of all ranks and attainments, from the highest to the lowest, were at that time roused and interested by the fair and promising, the terrific and stupendous events of the French revolution; and the excitement of this portentous phenomena in the state of Europe prepared this nation especially

(from the freedom with which all questions might be discussed) for that peculiar cast of subjects and of style, both in verse and prose, for which the present period is distinguished from every former one.

Varieties.

CURIOUS MEMENTO.-The Monthly Magazine gives two original autograph letters; the first very remarkable one from Marat, which gives rise to some curious reflections and deductions; the other is from Beaumarchais, the author of Figaro and the Barber of Seville, in which the following singular passage occurs. He is relating a conversation with the Duke de Lauraguais, celebrated for eccentricities and profligacy:-"But now the only treasure that remains to me is this,' said the duke, pointing to a ring on his finger, 'a treasure which no earthly power shall prevail on me to part with. It enables me to bear up with all my misfortunes-it is my sole consolationthis, sir, is my wife-my beloved wife!' I thought of the refuge for lunatics, and my countenance probably expressed my feelings. 'No, sir, I am not mad; this ring, or rather part of it, was once a beautiful and amiable woman; she rendered me, during her life-time, the happiest of mortals, and when her soul winged its flight to the celestial regions, I was determined that so much beauty and loveliness should not become the prey of vile reptiles. I applied to Vanderberg, the chemist, who, having placed the remains in a sheet of asbestos, it was committed to the flames, and reduced, by violent heat, to a small quantity of powder, which, afterwards, by some chemical preparation, was converted into a blue vitrified substance; here it is, sir, set in a gold ring-the very quintessence of my adorable partner! At this moment some person was announced; I took my hat, and wished Lauraguais a good morning."

Diary and Chronology.

Tuesday, 17th July.

July 17-Captain J. Slater, master of the Rotterdam steam-boat, and a London merchant, was killed as the vessel was returning with a party from an experimental voyage up the Nore. He sat down by the opening, and was about to lean his head on his arm, when he fell amongst the works, and before the machinery could be stopped, was crushed to death.

Thursday, 19th July. 1821-King George IV. crowned. Friday, 20th July.

St. Margaret, a virgin martyr of Antioch, suffered death about the year 275.

Wednesday, 25th July.

On this day St. James the apostle, usually called the great, or elder, the patron saint of Spain suffered martyrdom about the year 44.

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Illustrated Article.

THE SPIRIT BRIDE.
For the Olio.

"THERE again that beauteous figure flits before me; am I then in love with a being to whom I have never spoken even a passing word, whose name I know not, or whether she be worthy of being treasured for an instant in my imagination? but then a form so lovely, a face so fair, and eyes that sparkle with a lustre such as woman's never did before. I can scarce believe it is one of earth's creatures; however be it what it may, should we again meet I will boldly declare my passion. She may disdain it, laugh at me, call me presumptuous-well, well, call me as she will, I shall have spoken to her."

The quickly passing figure of an elegant being had drawn forth the above soliloquy from Albert Meenen, a young Hungarian by birth, and nearly related to some of the first families in Presburg. He had often in his ramblings met the object who had gained Vor. IX.

See page 452.

such strong hold upon his affections, and fancied she did not altogether gaze upon him with indifference;-but who was she? nobody knew; the spies he had employed to watch her had always been baffled, and there appeared a mys-' tery hanging around her that was quite beyond his power to unravel. Could she be a stranger staying a short time in Presburg? He caused enquiries to be made at every hotel in the town, whether high or low, but there was no one at all answering the description had been staying there.

Uncertain whither to go, he one afternoon dashed his horse through the magnificent suburbs of Presburg, and found himself in a short time galloping across the wide and open plain; he was completely wrapped up in his meditations, allowing the animal to go where and as he would, until the creature suddenly shying, nearly threw him from his saddle; this made him look up to see what had occasioned it. A few paces before him, stood the fair incognita he had so diligently and ineffectually sought; her gaze seemed

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