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to advise with Dianora's aunt upon what was to be done. Indeed, with the usual weakness of those, who take any steps, however likely to produce future trouble, rather than continue a present uneasiness, she herself thought it high time to do something for the poor boy; for the house began to remark on his strange conduct. All his actions were either too quick, or too slow. At one time he would start up to perform the most trivial office of politeness, as if he were going to stop a conflagration; at another, the whole world might move before him without his noticing. He would now leap on his horse, as if the enemy were at the city-gates; and next day, when going to mount it, stop on a sudden, with the reins in his hands, and fall a musing. "What is the matter with the boy?" said his father, who was impatient at seeing him so little his own master; "has he stolen a box of jewels?" for somebody had spread a report that he gambled, and it was observed that he never had any money in his pocket. The truth is, he gave it all away to the objects of Dianora's bounty, particularly to the man who blessed her at the church door. One day his father, who loved a bitter joke, made a young lady, who sat next him at dinner, lay her hand before him instead of the plate; and on being asked why he did not eat, he was very near taking a piece of it for a mouthful. Oh, the gallant youth!" cried the father, and Ippolito blushed up to the eyes; which was taken as a proof that the irony was wellfounded. But Ippolito thought of Dianora's hand, how it held the book with him when he knelt by her side; and, after a little pause, he turned and took up that of the young lady, and begged her pardon with the best grace in the world. "He has the air of a prince," thought his father, "if he would but behave himself like other young men." The young lady thought he had the air of a lover; aud as soon as the meal was over, his mother put on her veil, and went to seek a distant relation, called Signora Veronica.

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Signora Veronica was in a singular position with regard to the two families of Bardi and Buondelmonti. She happened to be related at nearly equal distances to them both; and she hardly knew whether to be prouder of the double relationship, or more annoyed with the evil countenances they shewed her, if she did not pay great attention to one of them, and no attention to the other. The pride remained uppermost, as it is apt to do; and she hazarded all consequences for the pleasure of inviting now some of the young de' Bardi, and now some of the young de' Buondelmonti; hinting to them when they went away, that it would be as well for them not to say that they had heard any thing of the other family's visiting her. The young people were not sorry to keep the matter as secret as possible, because their visits to Gossip Veronica were always restrained for a long time, if anything of the şort transpired; and thus a spirit of concealment and intrigue was sown in their young minds, which might have turned out worse for Ippolito and Dianora, if their hearts had not been so good.

But here was a situation for Gossip Veronica! Dianora's aunt had been with her some days, hinting that something extraordinary, but as she hoped not unpleasant, would be proposed by the good Gossip, which for her part had her grave sanction; and now came the very mother of the young Buondelmonti to explain to her what this intimation was, and to give

her an opportunity of having one of each family in her house at the same time! There was a great falling off in the beatitude, when she understood that Ippolito's presence was to be kept a secret from all her visitors that day, except Dianora; but she was reconciled on receiving an intimation that in future the two ladies would have no objection to her inviting whom she pleased to her house, and upon receiving a jewel from each of them as a pledge of their esteem. As to keeping the main secret, it was necessary for all parties.

Gossip Veronica, for a person in her rank of life, was rich, and had a pleasant villa at Monticelli, about half a mile from the city. Thither, on a holiday in September, which was kept by great hilarity by the peasants, came Dianora d'Amerigo de' Bardi, attended by her aunt Madonna Lucrezia, to see, as her mother observed, that no "improper persons" were there;and thither before day-light, let in by Signora Veronica herself, at the hazard of her reputation and of the furious jealousy of a young vine-dresser in the neighbourhood, who loved her good things better than any thing in the world except her waiting-maid, came the young Ippolito Buondelmonte de'Buondelmonti, looking, as she said, like the morning star.

The morning-star hugged and was hugged with great good will by the kind Gossip, and then twinkled with impatience from a corner of her chamber window till he saw Dianora. How his heart beat when he beheld her coming up through the avenue! Veronica met her near the garden-gate, and pointed towards the window, as they walked along. Ippolito fancied she spoke of him, but did not know what to think of it, for Dianora did not change countenance, nor do any thing but smile good-naturedly on her companion, and ask her apparently some common question. The truth was, she had no suspicion he was there; though the Gossip, with much smirking and mystery, said she had a little present there for her, and such as her lady-mother approved. Dianora, whom, with all imaginable respect for her, the Gossip had hitherto treated, from long habit, like a child, thought it was some trifle or other, and forgot it next moment. Every step which Ippolito heard on the stair-case he fancied was her's, till it passed the door, and never did morning appear to him at once so delicious and so tiresome. To be in the same house with her, what joy! But to be in the same house with her, and not to be able to tell her his love directly, and ask her for her's, and fold her into his very soul, what impatience and misery! Two or three times there was a knock of some one to be let in; but it was only the Gossip, come to inform him that he must be patient, and that she did not know when Madonna Lucrezia would please to bring Dianora, but most likely after dinner, when the visitors retired to sleep a little. Of all impertinent things, dinner appeared to him the most tiresome and unfit, He wondered how any thinking beings, who might take a cake or a cup of wine by the way, and then proceed to love one another, could sit round a great wooden table, patiently eating this and that nicety; and, above all, how they could sit still afterwards for a moment, and not do any thing else in preference, stand on their heads, or toss the dishes out of window. Then the Festival! God only knew how happy the peasantry might chuse to be, and how long they might detain Dianora with their compliments, dances, and songs. Doubtless, there must be many

lovers among them; and how they could bear to go jigging about in this gregarious manner, when they must all wish to be walking two by two in the green lanes, was to him inexplicable. However, Ippolito was very sincere in his gratitude to Gossip Veronica, and even did his best to behave handsomely to her cake and wine; and after dinner his virtue was rewarded.

It is unnecessary to tell the reader, that he must not The judge of other times and countries by his own. real fault of those times, as of most others, lay, not in people's loves, but their hostilities; and if both were managed in a way somewhat different from our own, perhaps neither the loves were less innocent, nor the hostilities more ridiculous. After dinner, when the other visitors had separated here and there to sleep, Dianora, accompanied by her aunt and Veronica, found herself, to her great astonishment, in the same room with Ippolito; and a few minutes after their introduction to each other, and after one had looked this way, und the other that, and one taken up a book and laid it down again, and both looked out of the window, and each blushed, and either turned pale, and the gentleman adjusted his collar, and the lady her sleeve, and the elder ladies had whispered one another in a corner, Dianora, less to her astonishment than before, was left in the room with him alone, She made a movement as if to follow them, but Ippolito said something she knew not what, and she remained. She went to the window, looking very serious and pale, and not daring to glance towards him. He intended instantly to go to her; and wondered what had become of his fierce impatience; but the very delay had now something delicious in it. Oh, the happiness of those moments! oh, the sweet morning time of those feelings! the doubt which is not doubt, and the hope which is but the coming of certainty! Oh, recollections enough to fill faded eyes with tears of renovation, and to make us forget we are no longer young, the next young and innocent beauty we behold! Why do not such hours make us as immortal as they are divine? Why are we not carried away, literally, into some place where they can last for ever, leaving those who miss us to say, "they were capable of loving, and they are gone to heaven!"

We left our two lovers, madam, standing in Signora Veronica's bed-chamber, one at the window, the other at a little distance. They remained in this situation about the same space of time in which we have been talking. Oh! how impossible it is to present to ourselves two grave and happy lovers trembling with the approach of their mutual confessions, and not feel a graver and happier sensation than levity resume its place in one's thoughts!

Ippolito went up to Dianora. She was still looking out of the window, her eyes fixed upon the blue moun tains in the distance, but conscious of nothing outside the room. She had a light green and gold net on her head, which enclosed her luxuriant hair without violence, and seemed as if it took it up that he might admire the white neck underneath. She felt his breath upon it; and beginning to expect that his lips would follow, raised her hands to her head, as if the net required adjusting. This movement, while it disconcerted him, presented her waist in a point of view so impossible not to touch, that taking it gently in both his hands, he pressed one at the same time upon her heart, and said, “It will forgive me, even for doing this." He

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had reason to say so, for he felt it beat against his fingers, as if it leaped. Dianora, blushing and con fused, though feeling abundantly happy, made another movement with her hands as if to remove his own, but he only detained them on either side. "Messer Ippolito," said Dianora, in a tone as if to remonstrate, though suffering herself to remain a prisoner, "I fear you must think me"-" No, no," interrupted Ippolito, you can fear nothing that I think, or that I do. It is I that have to fear your lovely and fearful beauty, which has ever been at the side of my sick bed, and I thought looked angrily upon me-upon me alone of the whole world." 66 They told me you had been ill," said Dianora in a gentle tone, "and my aunt perhaps knew that I thought that I-have you been very ill?” And without thinking, she drew her left hand from under his, and placed it upon it. Very," answered Ippolito; do not I look so? and saying this, he raised his other hand, and venturing to put it round to the left side of her little dimpled chin, turned her face towards him. Dianora did not think he appeared so ill, by a good deal, as he did in the church; but there was enough in his face, ill or well, to make her eyesight swim as she looked at him; and the next moment her head was upon his shoulder, and his lips descended, welcome, upon hers.

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There was a practice in those times, generated, like other involuntary struggles against wrong, by the absurdities in authority, of resorting to marriages, or rather plightings of troth, made in secret, and in the eye of heaven. It was a custom liable to great abuse, as all secrecies are; but the harm of it, as usual, fell chiefly on the poor, or where the condition of the parties was unequal. Where the families were powerful and on an equality, the hazard of violating the engagement was, for obvious reasons, very great, and seldom encountered; the lovers either foregoing their claims on each other upon better acquaintance, or adhering to their engagement the closer for the same reason, or keeping it at the expense of one or the other's repentance for fear of the consequences. The troth of Ippolito and Dianora was indeed a troth. They plighted it on their knees, before a picture of the Virgin and Child, in Veronica's bed-room, and over a mass-book which lay open upon a chair. Ippolito then, for the pleasure of revenging himself of the pangs he suffered when Dianora knelt with him before, took up the mass-book and held it before her, as she had held it before him, and looked her entreatingly in the face; and Dianora took and held it with him as before, trembling as then, but with a perfect pleasure; and Ippolito kissed her twice and thrice out of a sweet revenge.

The thoughtless old ladies, Donna Lucrezia and the other (for old age is not always the most considerate thing in the world, especially the old age of one's aunts and gossips) had now returned into the room where they left the two lovers; but not before Dianora had consented to receive her bridegroom in her own apartment at home, that same night, by means of that other old good-natured go-between, yclept a ladder of ropes. The rest of the afternoon was spent, according to laudable custom, in joining in the diversions of the peasantry. They sung, they danced, they eat the grapes that hung over their heads, they gave and took jokes and flowers, they flaunted with all their colours in the sun, they feasted with all their might under the

head gently, at the same time forcing a smile, which glittered through his watery eyes. At that instant the trumpet blew its dreary blast for the second time. Dianora had already risen on her couch, listening, and asking what noise it was that approached. Her aunt endeavoured to quiet her with her excuses; but this last noise aroused her beyond controul; and the good old lady, forgetting herself in the condition of the two lovers, no longer attempted to stop her. "Go," said she, "in God's name, my child, and Heaven be with you."

Dianora, her hair streaming, her eye without a tear, her cheek on fire, burst, to the astonishment of her kindred, into the room where they were all standing. She tore them aside from one of the windows with a preternatural strength, and, stretching forth her head and hands, like one inspired, cried out, " Stop! stop! it is my Ippolito! my husband!" And, so saying, she actually made a movement as if she would have stepped to him out of the window; for every thing but his image faded from her eyes. A movement of confusion took place among the multitude. Ippolito stood rapt on the sudden, trembling, weeping, and stretching his hands towards the window, as if praying to his guardian angel. The kinsmen would have prevented her from doing any thing further; but, as if all the gentleness of her character was gone, she broke from them with violence and contempt, and rushing down stairs into the street, exclaimed, in a frantic manner, People! Dear God! Countrymen! I am a Bardi; he "is a Buondelmonte; he loved me; and that is the "whole crime!" and, at these last words, they were locked in each other's arms.

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The populace now broke through all restraint. They stopped the procession; they bore Ippolito back again to the seat of the magistracy, carrying Dianora with him; they described in a peremptory manner the mistake; they sent for the heads of the two houses; they made them swear a treaty of peace, amity, and unity; and in half an hour after the lover had been on the road to his death, he set out upon it again, the acknowledged bridegroom of the beautiful creature by his side.

Never was such a sudden revulsion of feeling given to a whole city. The women who had retreated in anguish, came back the gayest of the gay. Every body plucked all the myrtles they could find, to put into the hands of those who made the former procession, and who now formed a singular one for a bridal; but all the young women fell in with their white veils; and instead of the funeral dirge, a song of thanksgiving was chaunted. The very excess of their sensations enabled the two lovers to hold up. Ippolito's cheeks, which seemed to have fallen away in one night, appeared to have plumped out again faster; and if he was now pale instead of high coloured, the paleness of Dianora had given way to radiant blushes which made up for it. He looked, as he ought,-like the person saved? she, like the angelic saviour.

Thus the two lovers passed on, as if in a dream tumultuous but delightful. Neither of them looked on the other; they gazed hither and thither on the crowd, as if in answer to the blessings that poured upon them; but their hands were locked fast; and they went like one soul in a divided body. The Liberal.

A SKETCH.

"The man of feeling, wrapt in memory's veil.” T.K. HERVEY.

There is a calmness of absorbing thonght,
Upon her beautiful and open brow;
Her eye is bright and clear as tho' it caught
Its inspiration from the heart below;—
The source from whence her bosom's peace doth flow:
And yet a passion dwells within her mind,
Could we but look into that heart, 'twould shew

How Mem'ry, fond affection's wreath hath twined Around the chords of Love, for ever there enshrined.

Look on her changing cheek, and thou wilt trace,
The bright tints of affection, lingering still,
Which time hath weaken'd but cannot efface;
Betraying feelings which too often fill
The eye with tears of fond regret, and will
Whilst life remains, for often shall the past,
Live o'er again and make her bosom thrill:

'Tho' future scenes be fair, and hours fly fast, One thought will yet remain, all others to outlast.

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HAPPINESS.

L.

Man never is, but always to be blest."-So Pope said; but he, as everybody knows, was a cynical, satirical, critical, crooked little fellow. On the other hand, Le Sage--or somebody else has said, "the man is happy who thinks himself so," and as every man likes to think of that which he is pleased to feed his thoughts withal, be it for us to set the world right on a point so important, and to enlighten the unhappy wretches whom the above line of Pope has plunged into the depths of despair.

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We will insist then, and for which we expect all mankind will thank that "we will address ourselves where we ever seek for approbation, to joy-creating, amiable, and lovely woman.

And first we ask the inexperienced girl to prove our own experience correct-if her lover is not ever blest in thinking her a divinity (as she is) when she vouchsafes to smile upon his protestations of truth, rapture, and eternal constancy? Or, should her tire-women have misplaced a curl-her parrot be too sullen to learn the last new chanson amoureuse, or her milliner have mistaken her directions-and in consequence, she herself finds it impossible to tolerate even a lover's importunities, still is he not as delightfully miserable as heart could wish? Does he not enjoy in idea the revenge he determines to take; call up the imaginary delights he shall realize in resenting the unmerited slights he has received; and after all the extacies engendered by a high fever and re-resolved resolves, does he find himself -after all these joyous wanderings of the brain-one jot less happy on finding himself on the very first op portunity, at the feet of his divinity, basking in her smiles? "Ever blest," he marries; and happy as he was before, we ask the wife if he is not more happy now? Perhaps, a little too much of the lemon may be occasionally squeezed into the matrimonial punch; but, this prevents its becoming mawkish to the taste, and occasions besides, the draught to be more enjoyed when both parties are agreed on dispensing with its acidity:

Then, there is the inexpressible delight of what may be best understood by teazing—a pleasure which the marriage-blest themselves can only appreciate. If the wife, who we are free to admit, never can be wrong, will be out when her lord had expected she would have remained at home; does not the husband torment himself with the most amusing conjectures imaginable? He resolves to accept the Chiltern hundreds and vacate his seat in parliament-philosophizes on the follies of a town life, and resolves to repair his fortune and what he jócularly calls the frailties of his wife, by a fixed retirement in the country. The very idea delights him, which imagination, to enhance his satisfaction, converts into a reality. He is already in the old manor-house surrounded by "innocence and rusticity," pigs, cows, cocks and hens. He is awakened by the cawing of rooks in the country, at the hour when well-plucked pigeons are crawling to their rest in town. He hears the flails loudly rapping on the barn-floor, and delighted at the sound, starts up and has the happiness of proving it was but the rap of his lady's footman at the hall door-the usual compliments of the morning are mutually exchanged; they retire for the "night."

"To sleep, perchance to dream.”

What says the experienced Widow to our assertion? Why, that she fully assents to it we are certain, in the most unqualified sense: she knows full well that the man is "ever blest" upon whom she smiles; and a constant smile is therefore on her face that it may gladden all she meets. She is an able diplomatist in the ministry of love, and has not unfrequently merely her own affairs in hand, but also the management of difficult arrangements on the behalf of her less politic friends. The prudent Widow is a sort of co-partner ship agent of Love and Hymen; and while she diffuses around, her knowledge for the happiness of society, she resolves ere she again marries as she is sure to do that the man she intends thus to honour shall know the full value of her condescension, by witnessing, first, the attractive power of her charms. Lastly, we appeal to amiable spinsters of a certain age, if it be possible for mankind to be happier than they are when they themselves are present? It is true that they have not (alas the pity!) made any one swain as happy as he might have been; but then how many scores have each of these single ladies made happy in hope? Not a heart that they have broken would have exchanged the extacies of its pain for the most fascinating of vulgar pleasures: and even now the phalanx of cynical old bachelors, whom they once left to sigh in an agony of inexpressible delight, still enjoy themselves and are happy-in railing at the whole sex.

Maidenhood is besides, always young and girlish; and, at the period to which we allude, can always feel a peculiar pleasure in running over the lengthy list of discarded lovers of by-gone days. In short, all we contend for, is, that everybody is always happy whether their pleasure consists in worrying themselves and their friends to death, or otherwise, that Pope himself was pleased to say the very reverse, for which, as no lady pitied him, he pined in a delightful despair. He became a satirist, from a good natured spite, and we defy any blockhead to shew that satire is not pleasing-save only to the objects of it.

THE FEELING HEART. A FACT.

Miss Sensibilla as her tears were flowing At the distresses of a fictious Tale, Sighed o'er her Novel, all her praise bestowing Upon the feeling heart of NANCY VALE. "She," cried the ardent fair," a heart possessing, "In pity to her Linnet braved the storm; "Her heart was like my own!-Oh! what a blessing! "To have a heart that would not hurt a worm!" Just then a Fly upon her book descended, Which caught the sympathetic Fair one's eye; But then-just then her pity was expended, She squeezed its life out, crying

FLOWERS.

Curse the Fly!”

Go turn our windows into bowers,

"Till the streets break forth in flowers.

I love to think that Nature and good-nature are synonymous. Calamity, to be sure, has an awkward appearance: War looks very much as if we had not arrived at years of discretion, and Death is an usher to another world not as handsome as he might be. But, to say nothing of the improvements that might be made in these points, if we tried, or the hidden reasons that may exist for retaining them, if unimproveable, it is the part of a wise man to divest evil of its malignity; to regard it as the senseless though stubborn material, which Nature does all she can to animate into good. There is nothing to prove the contrary: there is much to show that this is the more logical opinion; there is every thing to show that it is the wiser, the humaner, and the more hopeful one.

Among other beautiful things, flowers appear to be made on purpose to please us. Nature adorns her tresses with their lovely colours, like a lady issuing forth to charm our eyesight. It is possible, that colours have an utility, of which we have no conception. The serious bee, if not the gay butterfly, may know more of that matter than we do. But to us, pink, white and green, are clearly of no use but to delight; and Nature seems to take a particular pleasure`in showing us, that an innocent delight is a main part of utility. She persists in wearing colours of some sort all the year round, Her wintery skies have their beatties of light and shade; her snow is a feathery curiosity: her summer rain is silver.

I once sat looking at meadows full of daisies and buttercups, in company with a Quaker. It was on the bench that stands midway, in the lane going from Hampstead to West-End. He sat down beside me, and appeared to take possession of the scene before him, with such an impudent tranquility, that I felt inclined to ask him, what right he had with that coat on, to admire the gorgeous colours he was looking at. But I knew the overwhelming reasons which he would think he gave me, and was malicious enough not to indulge him in the more insolent meekness of his reply. I contented myself, like a proper polemic, with admiring the better religion of my own coat and trowsers.

Next to writing an epic poem, or a code of laws that should better the world, or being the author of the Tempest, or the Aravian Nights, or the Rape of the

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Lock, or the poem of Ariosto, or twenty other works which are the delight of mankind, there are few things I would sooner be the author of than a book which cultivates the love of flowers. The modest benificence of my ambition may be scorned by the uninitiated; but I beg to learn, what is the end of all their own labours and mighty enterprises,-if they have any. Doubtless, nothing but the comforts and little enjoyments of the individuals who compose society. Codes of laws end but in these. Sovereignty and legislation, through all their grandeur, look only, or profess to look, to our shoes and firesides. The mightiest operation of the great engines of power, the noblest climax which it attains to, the wonderful residium it deposits, is a quartern loaf. Are the elegances that adorn these loaves and firesides nothing? Lord Bacon did not think so, when he had the flowers in season regularly put upon his table. The "great Condé" was a cultivator of tulips. And great spirits are as capable now-a-days of these gentler evidences of their superiority. "Among the existing lovers of flowers, it is a pleasure to be able to name the gallant and accomplished young prince, Alexander Mavrocordato, one of the chief leaders of the Greeks in their late glorious struggle for freedom. A botanical work, not long since published in Italy, is dedicated to him on account of his known fondness for the subject." A satirical poet once told me, that none but the effeminate cultivated a love of music. The observation was the harder, inasmuch as he was effeminate himself, and not musical. I had the pleasure of annihilating him on the spot with the names of Luther, Frederic the Second, Milton, Alfred, and Epaminondas. It is not the love of any thing gentle and graceful, but the absorption in it, and the sacrifice of a wider spirit of action, that constitutes effeminacy. Generally speaking, individuals would be so much the better, the more they loved flowers. A flower is something to nurse; it is next to something to love. The pleasure

of it is communicable to others.

There is an observation of Sir William Temple, that the care of flowers is "more the ladies' part than the men's." I have only pleased myself, says he, "with seeing or smelling them." Very lofty and candid! This is the way of our lords of the creation. The ladies are to do all that is graceful and proper, and we are to condescend to be pleased. However, in this instance, the distinction may be allowed, provided there are ladies or gardeners enough to be had. Sir William was fortunate enough to have both. Bachelors and poorer men must be content, like Gray, to cultivate their own window-full. It is observable, by the way, that Sir William Temple, though content with patronizing flowers in others, and bending himself so far as to enjoy them, took an active part in the administration of the eatable provinces of his garden. Nothing comes amiss to him, fruit or vegetable; but fruits are the main thing, gentlemanly peaches, and patrician vines. He boasts of having " had the honour of bringing over four sorts of grapes into England." It was a good action; but what mighty and lofty difference there is between the dissemination of a love for the visible beauties of nature, and the extension of a little further tickling of our palates, is a question which may be left him to settle in the Elysian Fields with Titian, or the fields themselves.

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The writer of the "Flora Domestica," a very excellent work on the Treatment of Flowers in Pots, &c. acquaints us with the whimsical manner in which Anemones were first introduced amongst the public, in the following anecdote.

"The Abbé la Pluche relates a curious anecdote of M. Bachelier, a Parisian florist, who having imported some very beautiful species of the Anemone from the East Indies to Paris, kept them to himself in so miserly a manner, that for ten successive years he would never give to any friend or relation whomsoever the least fibre of a double Anemone, or the root of one single one. A counsellor of the Parliament, vexed to see one man hoard up for himself a benefit which nature intended to be common to all, paid him a visit at his country house; and in walking round the garden, when he came to a bed of his Anemonies, which were at that time in seed, artfully let his robe fall upon them; by which device he swept off a considerable number of the little grains, which stuck fast to it. His servant, whom he had purposely instructed, dexterously wrapped them up in a moment, without exciting any attention. The counsellor, a short time after, communicated to his friends the success of his project; and by their participation of his innocent theft, the flower became generally known."

THE FIRST-BORN.

Alaric A. Watts.

NEVER did music sink into my soul

So silver sweet,' as when thy first weak wail
On my 'rapt ear in doubtful murmurs stole,
Thou child of love and promise!-What a tale
Of hopes and fears, of gladness and of gloom,
Hung on that slender filament of sound!
Life's guileless pleasures, and its griefs profound
Seemed mingling in thy horoscope of doom.
Thy bark is launched, and lifted is thy sail
Upon the weltering billows of the world;
But oh! may winds far gentler than have hurled
My struggling vessel on, for thee prevail :
Or, if thy voyage must be rough,-mayst thou
Soon scape the storm and be-as blest as I am now !

THE DRAMA.

English Theatricals are in a miserably declining state. One of our patent Theatres (Covent Garden) is deserted by its company, and the other, in spite of the efforts of one of the finest actresses in the world, supported by performers of no mean reputation, is only holding out a little longer than its apparently less fortunate competitor.

We had intended to have said a few words on the declining state of theatricals, but from the quantity of other matter we must postpone our observations to a subsequent number.

THE KING'S THEATRE is we may say at its zenith. There is here congregated first-rate talent, both in the musical and ballet departments. The Italian Chorusses are not so effective as we would wish.

Madame Pasta performed Medea for the benefit of Donzelli, as usual, with the most impressive effect

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