"The devils ran howling, deafened, down to hell, siti ot The ghosts fled gibbering to their own dominions.") bar! But we cannot uniformly presume upon such an happy escape; and unless we also suppose that the influence of bells upon devils is as the square of their sound, while on human souls they act only in the simple ratio, the whole hypothesis must be abandoned. One consequence of this speculation, extremely agreeable to the sexton, is, that an extra sum was usually paid for ringing the great bell, because it gave a longer start, by driving the devil to a greater distance; on this account the practice, in all probability, must have chiefly been employed on the decease of attorneys.

Why bells should be rung on the event of a marriage is somewhat difficult to conceive, unless indeed it be in bitter irony, and as a foretaste of the noise and discord which, it is said, are inherent in " God's holy state." This is rendered more probable by the concomitant usage of marrowbones and cleavers; which rich bridegrooms are glad to buy off by sacrificing a guinea to the journeymen butchers. On almost every other occasion, bells are decidedly the proper accompaniment of some horror. They are rung to alarm the town in sieges and in fires; they are tolled at funerals, and, worse than that, at executions; as if it were not enough to be hanged, without having one's courage beaten down by the reiterated sound of one's own passing-bell. Bells are rung also to commemorate those scourges of nations, miscalled victories, and such public humbugs as the gunpowder treason, or that treason without powder, the restoration of the Stuarts. There is, however, some excuse for ringing this event, inasmuch as its misery could never be tolled. Bells likewise sound to mark the lapse of time, and to announce the gradual shortening of life. Every stroke of the clapper is a slice off our existence; no wonder it should grate on our ears---but happy is he who has not this unwelcome truth beaten into him by the hammers of a set of musical chimes. The climax of this auricular rack is to be found at Ghent, where the carillon is not confined to the performance of the clock, but a carilloneur is kept to torture the ears of the inhabitants; and any thing more diabolical can hardly be imagined in a human shape. "The carilloneur," says Dr. Burney," was literally at work, and hard work indeed it must be. He was in his shirt, with the collar unbuttoned, and in a violent sweat. There are pedals communicating with the great bells; upon which, with his feet, he played a base to several sprightly and rather difficult airs, performed with the two hands upon the upper species of keys." "It is certainly (I quote the same authority) a gothic invention, and perhaps a barbarous taste." Geminiani said that the Westminster-Abbey concerts were good to listen to from Westminster Bridge; but what distance could temper the malice of this energume, working manibus pedibusque to drive a whole community mad? Thank heaven! we have no such engeance as this in England; and it is to be hoped that those musical snuff-boxes on the grand scale, the chimes of St. Clement Danes, and two or three other such old-fashioned nuisances, will in time wear out, and leave not a wreck behind.

Turning from public to private nuisances, I proceed to denounce all the music of next-door neighbours; at least in modern streets, where the party-walls admit, with a laudable impartiality, the music of both

sides the house, making a Dutch concert of the most insufferable kind. On the one side of my dwelling I have a young gentleman praetising the double base, and on the other there is a lady learning to untune a harp, while from the back drawing-room her sister practises "I've been roaming" with a pertinacity which never suffers her to leave the piano-forte for a single moment," eating, drinking, and sleeping-hours excepted." Another auditory curse, which transcends all power of description, is the conversion of our best music into quadrille tunes. It is impossible to give the faintest idea of the torture which a genuine Rossinist endures from this crime, for it can be called no less. There is no music, however, which escapes the ingenuity of quadrille-makers. The other night, I heard Braham's duett of" The bird in yonder cage" estropié into a quadrille, in a manner which, as I did not much care 1 e for the original, convulsed me with laughter. If this nuisance be permitted, we shall soon dance country-dances to Luther's hymn, waltz to the Dead-march in Saul, and revive the long minuet to the melody of the 119th Psalm. This is the more cruel, inasmuch as the genuine quadrille-music of the French is excellent, and there is no occasion for jigging it to "Di tanti palpiti," "Fier incontro," or "Assisa al pie.' Among the minor atrocities of domestic life, need I mention the creaking boots of a physician? the snarling, snappish bark of a favourite lapdog, or a whistling fellow-lodger? Who is there that has not suffered martyrdom in its most lingering form from these afflictions?-Or shall I dwell on the nocturnal caterwauling of a convention of cats, a good snorer in the next room, or a bevy of rats practising for the Derby? If you happen to be wakeful, the ticking of a death-watch will suffice to throw you into a fever: then judge of the pleasures of a neighbouring steam-engine, throwing off newspapers by the thousand for a morning publication. But the theme is more inexhaustible than my paper. I have only touched on the coarser and more vulgar ear-grievances. I have not even hinted at the hopeless misery of solo playing, the crambo of piano-forte concertos, the trumpet accompaniment of "Let the bright seraphim," a debutante's "Soldier tired," Mr. Braham's contributions to the two-shilling gallery, or that refinement on musical tortures, singings after supper. An ungreased wheel in the street, or the howling of the night-wind through a cranny, is heaven to the least of these refinements on torture. Then there are such things as amateur concerts, and exhibiting mothers, and young ladies who sing of war, of hatred, of jealousy, of despair, and of death, with the tame insipidity of sucking doves, and sigh forth" scelerato," and "ingrato," P. P. P. with their mouths as fast closed as a dandy's door against the sheriff's officers. Whosoever has considered these things must be convinced that the ear (at least the musical ear) was not created till after the fall; and that a susceptibility to sound was added to the human sensibility as the proper penalty" of man's first disobedience." The farther consideration of this subject I beg, Mr. Editor, to refer to your Opera-critic, whose especial province it is to denounce offences against the ear; and I hope that, with a little industry, he will be able to draw up a case to lay before Parliament, time enough for its being added to the quibusdam aliis list of grievances that are to be discussed by the Finance Committee, in order to an establishment of the Wellingtonian millenium of national regeneration. M.

THE MOTHER'S LAMENT.

My child, my child, how couldst thou fade
Beneath a mother's smile?

Oh, God! that death should even make
Its pageantry beguile!

Like dew upon the withering flower
I mark'd the hectic bloom,

Yet never dreamt there dwelt beneath
A summons to the tomb.

Oh no, such radiance in those eyes,
Such brightness seem'd to blaze,
One moment-then the livid hue
Of death's sepulchral gaze!

I might have seen, I might have felt
The warning sent from Heaven-
I might have known such brightness ne'er
To earthly-born was given.

I might have mark'd in beauty's height
The feverish accents spoken,
But who, when sweetly sounds the harp,
Could guess its strings were broken?

I might have known, I might have felt,
How frail each fleeting dream,
The flower once cropp'd can ne'er survive,
Though freshen'd by the stream.

But oh! I never would believe,
What some had dared to tell,
I would not think those smiling lips
Could utter one farewell!

And oh my child, years, years have flown,

And life's decay is mine,

And many a sun hath bow'd beneath

Affection's hallow'd shrine.

Yet still, when blithest soars the song
From freedom's festive bower,

I ever hear the knell, the grief
Of thy sad funeral hour!

Of thy sad funeral hour! my child!
When every hope had flown :
Now every breeze but sadly brings
The thought, that I'm alone.

And oft alone, in eve's sweet calm,
With raptured gaze on high,
I think in each warm cloud I may
Thy fleeting form descry.

But no! ah no, I gaze in vain,
Where mortal eyes intrude,
Then turn away to drop the tear
In utter solitude!

E.

MADAME CHRISTOPHE.

THE Via Casciajuolo at Florence is a remarkably narrow street, and as it joins the Piazza Gran Duca with the Piazza del Duomo, it is the most populously crowded thoroughfare in that City. As full of little shops as Cranbourn Alley, and not unlike it, it is almost impossible to pass an acquaintance without touching, and would probably be one of the worst places in the world that one could select for cutting an old friend, whom some awkward sense of obligation had rendered odious to our "amour propre." I was one day walking down this street as fast as the crowd would let me, when the sudden approach of an overwhelming "Barocchio" heavily laden with wood almost drove me into a shop-window, and at the same time nearly threw into my arms two ladies who had been walking before me. Shrinking into the smallest possible compass to make room for them, that we might all escape uninjured, I was not a little astonished, when one of the ladies, on turning round, presented me a black face instead of a white one, and proceeded to thank me for my politeness in very elegant French. But how much greater was my astonishment when I recognized in the elderly lady her companion, equally black, no less a personage than the Ex-Empress Queen of Hayti, Marie Therese! the wife or rather widow of the late Henri Christophe "the Great," Emperor and King of Hayti, defender of the Faith and Sovereign Grand Master of the Order of St. Henri!! Here was an extraordinary rencontre, and although I knew by experience that Florence, next to London and Paris, is the place of all others for meeting every body, and that during my residence in it I had seen almost every Sovereign and Ex-Sovereign in Europe, and met people with whom I had been acquainted in all quarters of the civilized world, I should as soon have expected to have seen the Cham of Tartary, as the Ex-Empress of Hayti! My curiosity was most powerfully excited, for I had known her Majesty in happier times, and the sight of her now under such extraordinary circumstances recalled the remembrance of persons and places long since passed away. Absorbed in these recollections, I almost unconsciously followed my old acquaintances up a narrow staircase into an adjoining house, without considering whether 1 had any business there or not, and that I was consequently liable to be turned out. I found however that it was a place of public reception, a sort of second-rate "Trattoria," where, to my increasing astonishment, I saw the Queen, the Princess her daughter (for such they were to me), and a sort of café-au-lait-coloured "Dame de Compagnie," seat themselves at a small table and call for three portions of macaroni! I took possession of an adjoining table and did the same, that I might have time for observation, and also to inquire of the landlord how he had contrived to become possessed of such illustrious guests. The "Mancia" of a paul speedily procured me all the information he had to give. They had been brought to his house by a valet de place in his interest, and had regularly dined there at the same hour every day, paying most magnificently for whatever they had. "They are great people, I believe, in their own country," says he," although not of the same colour with us. This is the last time they dine here, and I am really sorry to lose them, as they have taken the Marchese Guigni's first-floor near the Santa Felicita Church."-This was all I wanted to know, and I sincerely applauded the extreme propriety of this arrangement; and while my host was proceeding in a virulent anathema against the Nobles of Italy for demeaning themselves to let lodgings, I made an internal resolution of waiting on her in private, in preference to a public recognition. I also did not wish to increase the discomfort of her situation, which was already sufficiently conspicuous; and I did not know how far her Majesty desired to preserve her incognita-so I thought I had better return home and defer my visit to the next day.

I could think of nothing but this adventure: the extraordinary difference of situation in which I had last seen this dark-coloured lady, and that in which I then saw her, presented itself most forcibly to my imagination.

Accustomed as we ought to be in the present age to the most unaccountable ups and downs in life; the contrast between the Empress of Hayti at her palace of Sans Souci, surrounded by a brilliant and flattering court, (for courtiers are much alike whatever may be their colour,) and the poor deserted black woman, eating her macaroni in a miserable "Trattoria," an object of derision to the vulgar, and of curiosity to all, was most astonishing. It was a lesson that might have instructed the wisest, and made the best better. I had of course heard of the public occurrences in Hayti, of the destruction of Christophe's dynasty, of his consequent suicide, and of the assassination of all his family, so that I naturally concluded that this lady had perished with her children. It was a subject I had often thought of with regret. I had witnessed their most brilliant moments, and I little thought that any casualty could ever have brought us in contact again, even if any of them should have escaped the general wreck.

Christophe himself was a most wonderful man: his story is too universally known to require any comment, and his downfall too recent to need repetition. He was plain and gentleman-like in his person, somewhat inclined to corpulency, and might be said to have a sort of benevolence of manner which was quite extraordinary in an uneducated negro. I have heard it remarked that he bore a very strong resemblance to our late King, with the exception of colour and features of course, which he endeavoured to increase as much as possible by dress. He usually wore a blue coat with red cuffs and collar, exactly like the old Windsor uniform, with a star on the left breast, and riband of the order of St. Henri. He had short crisp curled hair like all black people, but his was whitened by age, which added considerably to the respectability of his appearance; and he had the most intelligent eyes I almost ever encountered-they appeared to look through one. I remember a story that was told of him at that time, which places his "bonhommie" in a very pleasant point of view, and would have done the greatest credit to the very best-bred Sovereign of the most refined court in Europe. He was always particularly partial to the English, as much I really believe from inclination as policy; our merchants enjoyed privileges superior to those of all other nations, they were permitted to extend their rides beyond the barriers, which was not allowed to any body else without a particular permission; and he paid the greatest attention to our officers of the Navy and Army who visited his court, always inviting them to dine at his table. It was on one of these occasions that he had invited Sir James Yeo, then in the command of His Majesty's frigate the Southampton, to dine with him, and to bring as many of his officers as he thought proper; he had assembled all the principal inhabitants of his capital, all the grand dignitaries of his empire to meet him, and had prepared a most splendid repast for the occasion. Sir James, surprised at the magnificence with which he was surrounded, and more by the unexpected propriety with which every thing was conducted, and the excellence of the dinner, could not help exclaiming to his neighbour, " What a damned good cook this black fellow has got !"-a very natural, though not a polite observation, which of course this gallant officer would not have made, had he been aware that his Majesty spoke English as well as himself; an accomplishment he had acquired when exercising the more humble occupation of a Tailor at St. Kitt's. Christophe had the good sense to take no notice of the speech at the time, as he was quite aware no harm was intended; Sir James was spared the unpleasant feeling of knowing he had been understood, and the evening passed off with the utmost hilarity. The next morning, when the Southampton was getting under weigh, a black man came on board with a letter for the Captain from his Majesty, in which he very good-humouredly gave him to understand that he was aware of what he had said at dinner, and regretted that he could not oblige him with his first cook, but that "the damned black fellow had sent him the second-best cook in his dominions!!" I do not think Lord Chesterfield himself could have suggested a more delicate reproof, or produced a better example of innate good-breed