neighbourhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favourite scene of her gambols.

"The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war; and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk, hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church that is at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper, having been buried in the church-yard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head; and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the church-yard before daybreak.

"Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the spectre is known, at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

"It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative to dream dreams and see apparitions.

"I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud; for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great state of New-York, that population, manners, and customs remain fixed; while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream: where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbour, undisturbed

by the rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom."

In one particular, the above extract hecomes peculiarly striking; it is seldom that the history of a life, especially that of a literary man, presents an instance of so perfect a realization of early hope, as Mr. Irving's does, in respect to the place of his present residence. The very spot, which, in the exuberance of his youthful fancy, and when the subsequent substantial fruits of his prolific genius were as remote from his grasp as the poetic apples of gold in the fabled gardens of the Hesperides, he had selected for a retreat, "whither he might steal from the world and its distractions," is now, in long after life, the place of his tranquil abode, where he is enjoying the ample reward of his valuable labours, surrounded by the charms of nature and the elegancies of art. Inoffensive, kind and friendly himself to all his contemporaries, it is but meet that he should now exhibit the rare example of a distinguished author without an enemy in the wide world of letters, where it is deplorable to see envy, jealousy, invidious malignity and all uncharitableness besetting and haunting the onward course of meritorious writers, as though it were a region peopled only with ghools and demons. In the dawn of his career, Mr. Irving had to pass through a crowding host of such evil spirits, but they vanished in their murky mists ere noon, and now in the evening of his day, unshaded by a cloud, he is beheld, the glory of the west. In explanation of that portion of his description which speaks of Sleepy Hollow as being "under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk' in a continual reverie," it is now only necessary to quote the inscription pencilled by the poet Langhorne in a grotto of some enchanting scenery, popularly reported to be under a similarly mysterious influence:

"O'er Bamfylde's woods a witch presides; But then that witch is Taste."

SAINT SWITHIN'S DAY,
[JULY 15.]

"Saint Swithin's day, gif ye do rain For forty daies it will remain. Saint Swithin's day, an ye be fair For forty daies 'twill rain na mair." Scotch Proverb. OUR earliest recollections of Saint Swithinthe English Aquarius-as he is facetely styled, date from the church, with the large

bracket-clock in Cannon-street, and the adjoining "lane"-an aboriginal specimen of a City thoroughfare. Many a time and often has the huge dial, with its gigantic gilt hands and figures, struck us with special wonder, and appeared far more mystical in our eyes than the so-called Zodiacs at Denderah proved to the savans of France. At that time," the Rev. David Blair" had not prefixed a pasteboard clock-face, with moveable gilt-paper hands, to enable the little learner to tell the time o' day, or, as Shakspeare says:

"Thereby to see the minutes how they run, How many make the hour full complete, How many hours bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year." A clock, we know, is a wonderful object to man in all his seven ages; but a large clock to a child, i. e. man in a small letter, is an awful, not to say supernatural, object. Let any one who "with shining morning face," hath gazed up at either of the great dials of the metropolis, tell whether we magnify the gravity of their appearance, to say nothing of their solemn tick and "iron tongue."

Such were our primitive associations with Saint Swithin, of pluvious memory. Alack! little did we then know of the Calendar, save that cut upon a stick at school, or drawn in pen-and-ink on the cover of our classbook; and of styles, old and new, we were less cognizant; of their Catholic saintships we knew even less; and our notion of canonizing was that of blowing a man to atoms, not into eternity. Logically speaking, our ideas of these matters were very catholic: the light of ultraism soon came over us; we looked further, and how we fared, the reader must determine.

The seed of inquiry being thus sown, a certain wet day in July helped to raise it

up.

A soaking shower only damped the small-coal of our inquisitiveness, to make it burn brighter. Disappointed of a robustious game at prisoners' base," with a host of supernumeraries," we caught eagerly at the cause it was Saint Swithin's Day, and we were told that it would alike rain for forty days. Our next question was whether Sundays were to be included in this rainy quarantine.

In later years, a peep into the chronicles of the church of Rome told us marvels of the parentage and education of Saint Swithin: we there learned that he was of noble birth; that he passed his youth in innocent simplicity, in the study of grammar, philosophy, and the Holy Scriptures; in short, that he was an accomplished model of all virtues. His learning, piety, and prudence, induced Egbert, king of the West Saxons, to make him his priest, and to appoint him tutor to his son Ethelwolf. În those days, as in our own, this was a stepping

stone to good preferment: when Ethelwolf became king, he took Swithin as his chief ecclesiastical adviser; and by a charter in 854, granted to the church the tithes of all his dominions, and caused him to be elected bishop of Winchester. Humility and charity to the poor he, doubtless, practised very extensively; but his learning is more questionable. It is said by one writer, that Alfred the Great was committed to his charge in early infancy; but the bishop appears to have been a very inefficient tutor, for Alfred could not read or write until at a comparatively advanced age. Swithin died on July 2, 864, having ordered that his body might be buried in the churchyard, that his grave might be trodden by passengers ; other accounts quote this choice as an instance of his humility, and again, others refer it to his anxiety that the rain might fall on his grave; a wish that may have given rise to the popular superstition of rain at a funeral being fortunate for the deceased.

St. Swithin (for he was now canonized by the Pope) lay snugly in Winchester churchyard for a century; when, his relics having performed miracles exceeding in number the powers of memory, and even the stretch of imagination, the clergy considering it disgraceful that the body of a saint should lie in the open churchyard, resolved to remove it into the choir of the cathedral; but how they justified their disobedience to Swithin's own injunction is not a matter of history or moment. However, they set to their work, holy or unholy, on the 15th of July, when the Saint by no means approved of this officious interference, and would have none of it; and to prevent such a violation of the orders he had given in his lifetime, miraculously caused it to rain so heavily on that day, and for the following forty days, as to render the removal of the remains impossible; it was consequently abandoned as heretical and blasphemous; and, instead, was erected a chapel over the grave, at which many miracles are said to have been wrought; though the Saint's pluvian propensity was defeated at last. So runs, or rather pours, the legend. That St. Swithin was a virtuous and pious prelate was never doubted; but why he should be a kind of Jupiter Pluvius-a sort of weather-gagehas puzzled all the learned societies, meteorological included, from his time to the present.

It often happens that in seeking causes, men overlook the natural, in their fondness for the artificial; and such we suspect to have been the case in the affair of St. Swithin. We believe that more rain falls in July than in any other month of the year; and possibly, the summer of 964 was a very rainy season; which circumstances, combined with the easy faith of the times, were

Let us, however, hear the meteorologists upon the matter. Dr. Forster, (a zealous Catholic, by the way) allows this limitation of the sign of rain to a particular day to be carrying the idea of St. Swithin's power a little too far; yet, he adds, "for many years we have noticed that, if a showery time set in about this day, we have usually several weeks of showery and variable weather in the sequel."* Elsewhere the Doctor says: "Without any extraordinary share of superstition, the reader may ascribe some truth to this saying, as well as to many other trite and ancient sayings, founded on long actual observation of Nature. There are some natural reasons why, if showery weather set in at this time, it will be of long continuance. And we have ourselves noticed the fact repeatedly, and it was remarkably the case in 1823, that rainy and showery weather often ceases about the expiration of forty days from the 15th of July."+

Mr. Luke Howard, the meteorologist, however, observes, that "the notion commonly entertained on this subject, if put strictly to the test of experience at any one station in London, will be found fallacious. To do justice to popular observation, I may now state, that in a majority of our summers, a showery period, which, with some latitude as to time and circumstances, may be admitted to constitute daily rain for forty days, does come about the time indicated by this tradition; not that any long space before is often so dry as to mark distinctly its commencement.'

It is worthy of remark that the forty days' rain now ascribed to St. Swithin formerly belonged to St. John, (June 24;) its postponement is akin to Swift's eclipse put off. In the north of Scotland, St. Swithin's is termed St. Martin of Bullion's day, which Du Cange calls Festum Sti. Martini Bullientis, adding, probably so called on account of the warmth of the season in which the feast falls. Rain on this day is vulgarly said to forebode a wet hay-time.

Eagerly as the prognostication has been caught up by the old almanac-makers, it was ridiculed two centuries ago. Ben Jonson laughs at the notion in one of his plays, where a character, who reposed considerable confidence in the predictions of his penny almanac, exclaims: "O here, St. Swithin's, the 15th day, variable weather, for the most part rain, good!-for the most part rain? why, it should rain forty days after, more or less; it was a rule held afore I was able to hold a plough, and yet here

* Encyclopædia of Natural Phenomena. + Circle of the Seasons.

are two days no rain: ha! it makes me muse."

A rainy St. Swithin is well described by Gay :

"Now on St. Swithin's feast, the welkin lours,
And every penthouse streams with hasty showers.
But when the swinging signs your ears offend
With creaking noise, then rainy floods impend;
Soon shall the kennels swell with rapid streams,
And rush in muddy torrents to the Thames.
And bookseller, whose shop's an open square,
Foresee the tempest, and with early care,
Of learning strips the rails; the roving crew,
To tempt a fare, clothe all their tilts in blue;
On hosiers' poles depending stockings tied,
Flag with the slacken'd gale from side to side;
Church monuments foretel the changing air,
Then Niobe dissolves into a tear,

And sweats with sacred grief; you'll hear the sounds

Of whistling winds, ere kennels break their bounds;

Ungrateful odours common shores diffuse;
And dropping vaults distil unwholesome dews,
Ere the tiles rattle with the smoking shower,
And spouts on heedless men their torrents pour."

So nicely has the matter been arranged in the Calendar, that the cessation of the saintly rain is marked with precision equal to its commencement. By St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24th, the showery period has generally passed away, and the weather has become more favourable; or, as Dr. Forster has expressed it: "the watery spell of a weeping St. Swithin has nearly ceased to draw down the tears of Cœlum, the forty days' lamentation ending yesterday." Hence, the proverb:

"All the tears that St. Swithin can cry,

66

All Bartlemy's dusty mantle wipes dry." Meanwhile, a word of advice, at parting : the weather is not just now a safe topic of conversation: your company may be hippish. Addison had a singular remedy for a wet day, which he chose to visit a picture gallery. By this means," says our elegant essayist, "when the heavens are filled with clouds, when the earth swims in rain, and all nature wears a lowering countenance, I withdraw myself from these uncomfortable scenes into the visionary worlds of art; where I meet with shining landscapes, gilded triumphs,beautiful faces, and all those objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, and disperse that gloominess which is apt to hang about us in this dark disconsolate season." Perchance, Addison practised his own precept in the gallery at Holland House, to escape the storm-cloud of his Countess' illtemper; though we suspect that he oftener betook himself to the White Horse Inn, at Kensington, which, with its choice claret and gay frequenters, was the pleasantest paratonnere that inclination or philosophy could dictate.

Talking of philosophy, here is a piece, by

Scene 1.

of Banbury: "There were some years ago, a

sort of toys sold, with a Man and Woman so fixed before the Door of a House, that at the Approach of wet Weather the Woman entered it, and when the Weather grew fair, the Man. This was done by the Help of a Bit of Catgut, which shrinks in wet Weather, and stretches again when it is fair. This appears better by a Line and Plummet, especially if the Line be made of good Whipcord, that is well dried, for then if it be hung against a Wainscot, and a Line drawn under it exactly where the Plummet reaches, in very moderate weather it will be found to rise above it before Rain, and to sink below when the Weather is like to become fair; but the best Instrument of all is a good Pair of Scales, in one of which let there be a brass Weight of a Pound, and in the other a Pound of Salt, or of Salt-Petre well-dried, a Stand being placed under the Scale, so as to hinder its falling too low. When it is inclined to Rain, the Salt will swell, and sink the Scale; when the Weather is growing fair, the brass weight will regain its Ascendancy." Q.

FÊTE AT ST. CLOUD; OR, THE REMINISCENCES OF A STUDENT. By the Author of " Sketches in France," &c. (Continued from page 25.)

On returning to the cottage, we found Josef at the piano, and Madame François listening attentively to the cheerful air which the young musician was playing. The good lady smiled on seeing us, said that we had stopped rather late at the fête, and trusted that we had enjoyed ourselves.

I assured her that I had spent a delightful afternoon, and that though I had previously explored St. Cloud, I had not discovered its charms till that day.

A slight blush overspread the cheek of Lucelle at this acknowledgment; but she was soon relieved from her embarrassment

by Josef calling upon her to sing, while he accompanied her upon the piano.

The voice of Lucelle was peculiarly soft and sweet, rendered exceedingly pleasing by an exquisite musical ear and highly refined taste. She sung the popular song of

"La campagne semble deserte,

Depuis que Philis n'y vient plus," with great expression, which found a response in the recesses of my heart, and awakened a feeling of delight—a feeling different from that caused by the fascinations of masquerades, the amours of Mont Parnasse, or the smiles of the laughing, easily content, and joyous grisette. It was sun-lit joy-pure and all pleasing; the other was that mirth which carries a smiling face, but fails of influencing the heart, and of throwing over it the charm of satisfaction.

After promising that I would return in a

week to hear the result of Josef's examination, I took my leave of this happy home, amid the smiles of the cheerful widow, the "don't forgets" of Josef, and the bashful, yet tender looks of Lucelle.

I had not pursued my way far, when I heard some one behind calling me by my name. I turned round, and, with some difficulty, discovered that it was my college companion, Léon, with the half of his face wrapped up in a handkerchief. In spite of all my efforts, I could not refrain from laughing at his odd appearance; but as soon as I could muster words, I exclaimed:

"In the name of wonder, what is the matter? How have you come by that face?"

"Tricked like a nigaud, by a petticoat;" he replied, biting his lips. "A thousand curses on the sex!"

"Come, come, Léon, do not revile the greatest treasure that we have. Rather bless those who can add so much to the comfort of man. Out with your story. I will wager you a bottle of Madeira that you are as much to blame as your fair companion."

"A few hours ago," he said, "as I was walking in the gardens, I met a young girl, apparently a jolie paysanne of the village. I accosted her; she was shy at first, but before half an hour had expired, we were as happy together as if we had known each other for years. I engaged her to dance with me, and was overjoyed to find that she was not only a Terpsichore in her movements, but was so au fait in the art of pleasing that I was enraptured at the idea of having her name added to the list of my conquests. At length, my fair campagnarde complained of a sore throat, and wondered, with an air of simplicity, what would do it good. We were then passing an auberge, upon which her eyes were fixed. I could not refuse my amorosa, and therefore conducted her to a room where two young men were seated, and called for refreshment. Soon after, one from his pocket, and asked his companion if of the young men drew a pack of cards he would play a game to pass the time. The other replied that he could find no pleasure in playing single-handed, but added, looking at us, that he would be most happy to take a hand if we would join them. Before I had time to answer, my coureuse exclaimed

"O! I should like very much to play. My cousin Rodolphe taught me écarté, and often said that I played exceedingly well!" Then turning to me with a winning smile, "Do play, Monsieur Charles, I will be your partner."

I could not refuse her. We played. I began by winning, but ended by losing every farthing I had. As soon as my seeming paysanne found that I had no more money, she bade farewell to her rustic air,