lower orders, are here universally cased in a clean white сар, without any bonnet. Market-day at Calais afforded us a good opportunity of seeing them assembled, and we pronounced them decidedly more cleanly and better dressed than the same ranks in England; even the fishwomen forming a contrast, by their clean head-dresses and stockings, and decent attire as well as demeanour, to that utter abandonment of person and language, for which the ladies of Billingsgate have rendered themselves so notorious. This favourable impression was confirmed on the following evening, when a few sous procured us admission to the Vauxhall of the place, consisting of a shabby room for dancing, with a band of three or four fiddlers, and a small open plat, for the same purpose, surrounded by arbours. It was crowded to excess with soldiers, sailors, and tradespeople, all well-dressed, many of the women even deserving to be termed genteel, if not elegant, in their appearance, and all dancing waltzes and quadrilles, with a spirit, grace, and decorum, that would have done honour to a more select assemblage. Several couples, who could not get admittance into the grand saloon (as it was rather undeservedly called), were dancing outside, while a refreshment-room at the end, notwithstanding the inviting notice that all sorts of liquors were to be had within, at prices subjoined, did not contain a single tenant.-In England, all this would have been reversed; and, as if to complete the contrast, the evening on which we witnessed this universal scene of festivity, was Sunday.

Calais is a fortified town of some extent; and having a good market, an extensive pier, and daily intercourse with England possesses attractions as a place of residence for our countrymen, of which a good many have availed themselves. [To be continued.]

SONG.

AVAUNT with your babble of Venus and Cupid,
And all the symbolical gentry of yore;

I never could yet be thus silly or stupid,
To bow to a statue, and say "I adore !”
But I have an idol who governs my fate,
Earth's breathing inhabitant, mortal I own;
And beauty that strongly can love or can hate,
Is certainly quite as enchanting as stone.
The goddess who fixes my glowing devotion,
Has eyes that are lucid, and lips that are warm;
And adds the light graces of delicate motion,
To perfect the charm of an elegant form:-
And, scorning the gloomy delusions of old,

I worship, at sunset beneath the blue dome,
Which, fretted with purple, and crimson, and gold,
Outshines all the torch-light of Athens and Rome.

Unaided, amid the romantic seclusion,

Her priest and attendant-I fling o'er the air

The incense of passion; secure from intrusion,

Though crowds of young gallants my priesthood would share ;

For I am no Jesuit, nor proselytes need,

While flowers, birds, and zephyrs, with planets above,

Pay homage to her, and, adopting my creed,

Unite in the blissful religion of love.

J.

SONNET.

YES! it is beautiful-that summer scene,

With all the lights of morning o'er it gleaming,-
And thou art beautiful-thy sweet eye beaming
In virtue's brightness, radiant, yet serene ;
But there is on my mind a thought that decks
With brighter beauty all my eye can see;

A thought whose presence quenches not, nor checks
The fervour of my gaze, beholding thee-
Thought of the pure, made purer still-and all
Of beauty, yet more beautiful :-to me
Such musings are delightful, for they fall
Like the sun's beams on every thing I see,
Gilding, refining, sanctifying all

With noble thoughts of Immortality.

PANANTI'S EPIGRAMS.

E.T.

PANANTI, who is chiefly known in England by his interesting account of his captivity among the Turks, is much esteemed in Florence as a wit and a pure Tuscan writer. His epigrams are in great circulation in Italian society, where they are admired for their causticity, political allusion, boldness, and liberality of sentiment. The volume which he has printed, though pruned of whatever might give umbrage to the powers that be, has considerable merit. A large part, however, consists of translations from the French, English, and ancient epigrammatists; and of those pieces which are original, many partake too much of the licentiousness, as well as of the purity of diction of the fifteenth century, to render them generally acceptable to an English public.

EPIGRAM FROM PANANTI.

IN vece di far atti

Di carità, di speme,

E dell' anima í fatti

In vece d'aggiustar, sull' ore estreme

Della sua vita Rombo calcolava,

Fino a quanto montava

La spesa del suo male.

Tanto al medico, tanto allo speziale,

Tanto per l'inventario e sepoltura

Tanto ci vuol per rimbiancar le mura,

Tanto in messe ed in altre opere buone,

Oltre il render la dote alla consorte.

Oh! gridò con ragione

E' così spaventevole la morte.

Stretch'd on his bed of death old Thomas lying,

And pretty certain he was dying,

Instead of summing his offences,

Began to reckon his expenses,

For mixture, bolus, draught and pill,

A long apothecary's bill;

And guineas gone in paying doctors,

With fees t'attorneys, and to proctors;
The sexton's and the parson's due,
The undertaker's reck'ning too;—
Alas! quoth Tom, with his last sigh
'Tis a most fearful thing to die.

M.

to inform the meditative poet, that all his sad moods and hallowed visions are but the effects of flatulency-that will attempt to prove we are indebted for Petrarch's poetic griefs to wind, and for Childe Harold to indigestion?" Who would compare imaginations," says a whimsical author, "with a leg of pork or a German sausage?" I know several ;-but one person in particular, who becoming too strongly impressed with this doctrine of mental effects from physical causes, succeeded in metamorphosing himself from a poet and a philosopher, into a self-quack and a hypochondriac. Formerly, "with all his imperfections on his head," he wrote pretty verse and sound prose, unconscious that his supper of the last night should have rendered him totally incapable of such things. But now he knows better; his pen has not touched paper these many months, and his tongue can run on no subject but Elixir of Vitriol and Anderson's Pills. I owe Mr. Burton a grudge for the loss of my intellectual friend, and intend paying him for it one day or other, as soon as I can muster courage, -brush up my old Latin, and older English, for the purpose of wading him through.

Though youth be a season of jollity, yet it is in hours of sad ness that the man is most strongly reminded of the days of yore. The deep feeling of melancholy is the only one that extends like a clue through life, that blends present, past, and future, into one, and places our identity palpably before us. It is the point at which we all feel at home; and when, after intervals of apathy and distraction, we return to it, it seems as if life, like time, were but a series of revolutions, and at certain periods found itself at the very goal from whence it first started. It may be fantastical, but I really look upon melancholy moods in some such light, as if the soul came to Aries again, resumed its original position, that it might take the same old views, and recruit the same old feelings. This is the holiday-hour of life, when we turn aside from the high road of human trouble, and shake hands with years and thoughts long past. When we con over our young likings and antipathies, perceive them to have been the germs of existing prejudices, and acknowledge with the poet,

"The child to be the father of the man."

There is nothing so refreshing to the mind, as for a while to cast off its years, and dispense with its maturity; but though it is possible to effect this in contemplation-over books it is not easy. Though feeling may retrace its steps, and put on its youth again, taste will not: it is a stubborn mentor, and in spite of us will be cavilling. The days were when we could dwell over Werter, Richardson, Zimmerman, and merge our very souls in their pages. How cursedly a few years have improved us; the smile usurps the place of the tear that has been, and we associate nothing but ludicrous ideas with the quondam heroes of our romantic thoughts.

We are accustomed to account for this, in what, I think, an erroneous way we plaintively confess, that we have grown old in feeling, and that the source of our tears is dried up. It may be so with many, but I rather think feeling to be more lasting than we suppose; that it is the taste which outgrows it, and finds not the old feelings ridiculous, but the manner in which they are represented unnatural. In short, I am inclined to lay the blame of my apathy on the authors, not on myself. Those works grew insipid to me, long ere I grew ashamed of being sad; and were so even at the time, when I imagined a pensive brow to be the only true characteristic of the bard.

Although it has not quite arisen to a controversy, yet there have been passages on both sides, and much diversity of opinion on the question, "Whether melancholy or mirth be the true poetic temperament?" It would prove an interesting subject of discussion, more interesting, as it would be very unlikely ever to come to an issue. But the greatest blow, in my mind, ever given to the sublimity of sadness, comes from the doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim, which, whatever be their general merits, in this certainly have much reason. "The organ of melancholy," say they, "is but an enlargement of the organ of cowardice:-they are one and the same feeling, proceeding from the same defect in the constitution." This, without being any thing of a craniologist, appeared to me a very startling truth; and being very far gone at the time in a mental jaundice, it proved quite a restorative. The humiliating view, in which it represented all I was accustomed to look upon as sublime, was a complete overthrow to my received system of idealism. I was compelled to alter my whole plan, and both alone and in company determined "to be decked in smiles,” lest I should have the ill luck to take myself, or be taken for-a coward. Y.

TO ECHO.

Echo! sole relic of the lovely fair,

Who for Cephisus' son in hopeless love
And wasting grief dissolved herself in air;
But that she might her constant passion prove,
Left her soft voice 'mid rocks and lonely hills,
Responsive to the passing traveller's call,
Where for Narcissus' slight she near the rills,
Mingling her tears with the soft water-fall,
Pined in slow grief away-thy friendly haunt
I often seek, and fly the busy crowd
Where virtue sickens and where vices flaunt,

Far from the great, the giddy, and the proud
Thy voice I love, and near thy lonely dell,
Would rear with simplest hand my rustic cell.

ci

PEARCE'S ACCOUNT OF ABYSSINIA.

(Concluded from page 258.)

OUR traveller mentions other interesting matter, which our limits do not permit us to detail; we must therefore refer the inquisitive reader to the Work itself. He says the Abyssinians are always feasting, excepting during their fasts.

"They have great crying and howling for the dead, for many days, and appoint a particular day for a general cry, which ends their crying. If a great man dies, they make his effigy and cry and howl round it, firing their matchlocks, and tearing the skin off their temples and forehead, until the blood runs down their neck in such a horrible manner as would frighten any one unacquainted with these customs. They pretend to be so weak with sorrow that they cannot support themselves; one of them then begins to eulogize the actions, the beauty, and riches, of the deceased, and concluding in a sorrowful tone, they all together make a loud bellow, and tear their temples. This ceremony being over, they retire into a large house, where they eat and drink until they turn their sorrow into merriment and quarrelling."

The Abyssinians, says Pearce, have many children and relations on account of having so many women; he knew many great men who have had from 40 to 50 children, and all by different mothers: they do not know scarcely which child was born first, as they keep no record of time even the king or priest does not know his own age. "There are twelve lickcounts, or learned men, by whom all things are regulated; they keep the time. Their year begins from the day St. John was beheaded-1st of September with them, but 29th of August with us. Their year is divided into four parts-the first is called St. Matthew, the second St. Mark, the third St. Luke, the fourth St. John. They have other names also for those four quarters, viz. Zerry, Currunpt, Corvio, Aggie, i. e. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter."

The Abyssinians, like their Muhamedan neighbours, never keep a corpse in the house a moment after it is dead; but they immediately wash it, envelope it with cloth, and take it to the grave, without a coffin; none but the kings and the great men have coffins!

They have all a father confessor, and Pearce was obliged to have one to entitle him to the name of Christian. Here follows a long description of various religious ceremonies and tricks of priests to delude or terrify the ignorant and superstitious people.

The Abyssinians are great liars; no dependance can ever be put in them of whatever rank they may be. Their mode of evading an oath is curious if the king swears he will forgive an offender, and then wishes to punish him, he will call his servants together, and say, "Servants, you see the oath I have taken; I scrape it clean away from my tongue that made it." He then puts his tongue out and scrapes the oath off with his teeth, and spitting, says, "When the rebel comes, you will do your duty as I shall order you."

Their oaths are very solemn, but broken without hesitation. Pearce says he has known the following oath before the priests sworn to a falsity: "If what I now swear to, be not true, may God blow away my soul from me as I blow away the fire from this candle," which he immediately