succeeding milestone: he ceased to put his head out of the window every five minutes, and gaze anxiously up the road; he readily anticipated a triumph-when a crack, a crush, a shriek from the lady, a jolt, an instant change of position, and a positive pause, occurred in the order in which they are stated, with such suddenness and relative rapidity, that the gentleman was for a moment or two utterly deprived of his presence of mind by alarm and astonishment. The bolt which connects the fore-wheels, splinter-bar, springs, fore-bed, axletree, et cetera, with the perch that passes under the body of the chaise to the hind-wheel-springs and carriage, had snapped asunder; the whole of the foreparts were instantly dragged onwards by the horses; the traces by which the body. was attached to the fore-springs gave way; the chaise fell forward, and of course remained stationary, with its contents in the middle of the road; while the deaf postilion rode on with his eyes intently fixed on vacuity before him, as though nothing whatever had happened.

Alarmed and indignant in the highest degree, at the postilion's conduct, the gentleman shouted with all his might, such exclamations as any man would naturally use on such an occasion; but Joey, although but a little distance, took no notice of what had occurred behind his back, and very complacently trotted his horses on at the rate of eleven or twelve miles an hour. He thought the cattle went

better than ever; his mind was occupied with the prospect of a speedy termination to his journey; he felt elated at the idea of outstripping the pursuers-for Joey had discrimination enough to perceive at a glance, that his passengers were runaway lovers-and he went on very much to his own satisfaction. As he approached the inn which terminated the "long down," Joey, as usual, put his horses on their mettle, and they having nothing but a forecarriage and a young lady's trunk behind them, rattled up to the door at a rate unexampled in the annals of posting, with all the little boys and girls in the neighbourhood hallooing in their rear.

It was not until he drew up to the inn door and alighted from his saddle, that Joey discovered his disaster; and nothing could equal the utter astonishment which his features then displayed. He gazed at the place where the body of his chaise, his passengers, and hind wheels ought to have been, for above a minute, and then suddenly started down the road on foot, under an idea that he must recently have dropped them. On nearing a little elevation, which commanded about two miles of the ground over which he had come, he had found to his utter dismay that no traces of the mainbody of his chaise were perceptible; nor could he discover his passengers, who had, as it appeared in the sequel, been overtaken by the lady's friends. Poor Joey immediately ran

into a neighbouring hay-loft, where he hid himself, in despair, for three days; and when discovered, he was, with great difficulty, persuaded by his master, who highly esteemed him, to resume his whip, and return to his saddle.

Thou whom my woman's heart cherished so long:
Farewell! and be this song the last,
Wherein I say "I loved thee well."

Many a weary strain

(Never yet heard by thee) hath this poor breath
Utter'd of Love and death,

And maiden grief, bitter and chid in vain.
Oh! if in after years

The tale that I am dead shall touch thy heart,
Bid not the pain depart!

But shed, over my grave, a few sad tears.
Think of me, still so young,

Silent, though fond, who cast my life away,
Daring to disobey

The passionate spirit that around me clung.
Farewell again! and yet

Must it indeed be so? and on this shore
Shall you and I no more

Together see the sun of the Summer set?
For me, my days are gone!

No more shall I, in vintage times prepare
Chaplets to bind my hair,

As I was wont: Oh, 'twas for you alone!
But on my bier I'll lay

Me down in frozen beauty, pale and wan
Martyr of love to man,

And like a broken flower, gently decay.

REVERSES.

A TALE OF THE PAST SEASON.

THE evening of Thursday, the 15th of February, 1827, was one of the most delightful I ever remember to have spent. I was alone; my heart beat lightly; my pulse was quickened by the exercise of the morning; my blood flowed freely through my veins, as meeting with no checks or impediments to its current, and my spirits were elated by a multitude of happy remembrances and of brilliant hopes. My apartments looked delightfully comfortable, and what signified to me the inclemency of the weather without? The rain was pattering upon the skylight of the staircase; the sharp east wind was moaning angrily in the chimney: but, as my eye glanced from the cheerful blaze of the fire to the ample folds of my closed window-curtains-as the hearth-rug yielded to the pressure of my foot, while, beating time to my own music, I sung, in rather a louder tone than usual, my favourite air of "Judy O'Flannagan;" the whistling of the wind, and the pattering of the rain, only served to enhance in my estimation the comforts of my home, and inspire a livelier sense of the good fortune which had delivered me from any evening engagements. It may be questioned, whether there are any hours in

this life, of such unmixed enjoyment, as the few, the very few, which a young bachelor is allowed to rescue from the pressing invitations of those dear friends, who want another talking man at their dinner tables, or from those many and wilily-devised entanglements which are woven round him by the hands of inevitable mothers, and preserve entirely to himself. Talk of the pleasure of repose! What repose can possibly be so sweet, as that which is enjoyed on a disengaged day during the laborious dissipations of a London life? Talk of the delights of solitude! Spirit of Zimmerman ! What solitude is the imagination capable of conceiving so entirely delightful, as that which a young unmarried man possesses in his quiet lodging, with his easy chair and his dressinggown, his beef-steak and his whisky and water, his nap over an old poem or a new novel, and the intervening despatch of a world of little. neglected matters, which, from time to time, occur to recollection between the break of the stanzas or the incidents of the story? Men —married men—may expatiate, if they will, in good polished sentences, on the delights of their firesides, and the gay cheerfulness of their family circles; but I do not hesitate to affirm, that we, in our state of single blessedness, possess not only all the sweets of our condition, but derive more solid advantages from matrimony itself, than any of these solemn eulogists of their own happiness can