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was ever stoned to death; no unfortunate dog was freighted with its frightful load, the old tea-kettle, and, (I blush to tell it), no orchard was ever robbed of its inviting treasure, without my bearing a hand in the business. Look not, therefore, courteous reader, in my native village for my character, for not one now living will speak of me as of any other than a mischievous imp, who they believe to have been hung somewhere at home or abroad, or transported to some of the new colonies.

About a quarter of a mile from the village lived a rich squire of the name of C. He was a haughty, proud, and severe man; very harsh towards poachers and very fond of sporting. He was held in execration by his neighbours, who never failed to annoy him when an opportunity offered. He had a fine orchard well stocked with the best fruit-trees, and I and my companions resolved to ease him of a few of the beautiful apples with which they were loaded. Accordingly, having assembled about a dozen of the oldest boys in the village, a council was held and our plans were arranged. We started on the expedition one moonlight night, well provided with bags and baskets, and having forced our way through the thick hedge which surrounded the orchard, we commenced the work of plunder.

Such was our eagerness to seize upon the fruit, that we, in many instances, tore off whole branches, which we threw down to our companions below, who stripped off the fruit and placed it in their bags and baskets; but, as the devil would have it, before we had secured half a load, some of the Squires' household took the alarm, and sallied out upon us armed with all sorts of weapons. Those who were up aloft scrambled down precipitately and fled with speed. Those who were deputed to do the bagging got the start of them, soon reached their homes and were out of danger, but one of the gatherers fell into the clutches of the enemy, who bore him in triumph to the Squire's hall. Of this capture, however, we were not aware until the morning, as every fugitive shifted for himself, and each took a different course; but when it was known that one of the party had been seized, we all shook in our shoes. Some were for going at once to the Squire's, and imploring his forgiveness; some relied upon the constancy and good faith of their captured companion in the robbery, while I resolved

at once to fly and seek my fortune in the world, for I knew too well the Squire's revengeful disposition, and saw that he would pursue the whole party with the utmost rigour. Accordingly I prepared for flight, and having possessed myself of several pieces of ancient gold coin which my mother kept in a drawer, I left the house early in the morning, having first bid adieu to my companions who were in considerable consternation. I took the road to London-not without a tear, for my parents knew not of my purpose, and not without some qualms of conscience for the robbery I had committed upon my poor mother; but then I consoled myself with the reflection that I had relieved her from the burden of a troublesome and unruly child, for whose loss she could not grieve. As to my father, my only fear was that he might discover my flight, and bring me back with the argument of a good horsewhip. I kept to the fields for the first day, fearing to trust myself in the open road, and towards evening came to a barn at the end of a small village, where I took my rest for the night. I rose early in the morning, and having purchased a loaf and a basin of milk with a few pence which I had in my pocket, I made a hearty breakfast, and then held on my way to London. The sun had set before I reached the town of Reading, where I purposed resting for the night; but when within about a mile of it, I met two ill-looking fellows, whose dusky complexions, dark hair and sharp black eyes indicated their gipsy origin. They eyed me significantly and whispered to each other. This made me quicken my steps, and I looked eagerly forward in the expectation of perceiving on the road some person whose appearance might lead me to hope for protection. But, alas! not a soul appeared in sight, save these two worthies, who, as they approached, I could easily see were bent on mischief.

"Hallo, youngster!" cried one of them, "where are you trudging to, tonight?"

"To the town," replied I, in a voice which betrayed my alarm.

"What have ye got about ye, lad?" inquired the ruffian, laying his hand on my shoulder, "let us see, or I shall overhaul your duds at once."

If I was before alarmed, I was now absolutely petrified with fear, and I heartily wished myself at home again. The ver geance of Squire C was nothing to the fierce looks of these wretches, whose

countenances were as terrific as that of any bandit in a melo-drama. I had, however, short time for reflection, for the ruffian who had before spoken, now became impatient. "What," cried he, you don't mean to give us the chink, ay? then d-n me, we'll strip you, my lad, and cut your throat into the bargain." Here his companion spoke. "Be quiet, Bill," said he, "there's no call for frightening the boy; why his hand trembles so that he can scarcely get it into his pocket," then addressing me, he continued, "Come, now, pull out the stuff, there's a good lad, and nobody shall harm you; only you must be quick, that's all."

"Ay, or I'll slit his weazand by G-d," said the other.

"Hold your yelping," said he of milder mood, "the boy's a good boy, and will give us all he's got, without any more bother, I'm sure. He looks something like a farmer's son, and has, I dare say, some of the ready about him."

Fearing that any delay might provoke them to use me roughly, I drew from my waistcoat pocket the money I had purloined from my mother and gave it to the gentler ruffian. At that moment the other whispered in his ear, and darted a malignant look at me, which I, too, readily interpreted. He was again interrupted by his comrade, who thrust him aside, and said, "Thee sha'nt doo't, Bill-I wont have him hurted." Then turning to me-" Harkee, my boy, tramp off as fast as you can toddle, or this gallows bird will cut your throat: and mind, not a word about us when you get to the town, or"-and he swore a bitter oath-" better you had never been born."

I did not wait a second bidding, but took to my heels, while the rogues, leaping through a gap in the hedge, soon disappeared in a neighbouring thicket. I ran for about a quarter of a mile, hardly daring to look behind me, when I slackened my pace, and pursued my way with a heavy heart. The money upon which I had relied for subsistence, at least for a few days after my anticipated arrival in London, was gone, and I saw nothing but starvation and want before me. In the tumult of my grief, my hands mechanically rummaged my waistcoat pockets, when, to my great joy, I discovered that in my late fright I had left one coin-a Queen Anne guinea, which had crept into a corner, and escaped the fate of the others. (To be continued.)

HAZLITT'S APHORISMS.

A person who does not tell lies will not believe that others tell them. From old habit, he cannot break the connection between words and things. This is to labour under a great disadvantage in his transactions with men of the world; it is playing against sharpers with loaded dice. The secret of plausibility and success is point-blanc lying. The advantage which men of business have over the dreamers and sleep-walkers is not in knowing the exact state of a case, but in telling you with a grave face what it is not, to suit their own purposes. This is one obvious reason why students and bookworms are so often reduced to their last legs. Education (which is a study and discipline of abstract truth) is a diversion to the instinct of lying and a bar to fortune.

Those who get their money as wits, spend it like fools.

It is not true that authors, artists, &c. are uniformly ill-paid; they are often improvident, and look upon an income as an estate. A literary man who has made even five or six hundred a-year for a length of time has only himself to blame if he has none of it left (a tradesman with the same annual profits would have been rich or independent); an artist who breaks for ten thousand pounds cannot surely lament the want of patronage. A sieve might as well petition against a dry season. Persons of talent and reputation do not make money, because they do not keep it; and they do not keep it, because they do not care about it till they feel the want of it-and then the public stop payment. The prudent and careful, even among players, lay by fortunes.

It is some comfort to starve on a name; it is something to be a poor gentleman; and your man of letters "writes himself armigero, in any bond, warrant, or quittance." In fixing on a profession for a child, it is a consideration not to place him in one in which he may not be thought good enough to sit down in any company. Miserable mortals that we are! If you make a lawyer of him, he may become Lord Chancellor; and then all his posterity are lords. How cheap and yet acceptable a thing is nobility in this country. It does not date from Adam or the conquest. We need not laugh at Buonaparte's mushroom peers, who were something like Charlemagne's or the knights of King Arthur's round table.

We talk of the march of intellect, as if it only unfolded knowledge of good: the knowledge of evil, which communicates with twenty times the rapidity, is never once hinted at. Eve's apple, the torch of Prometheus, and Pandora's box, are discarded as childish fables by our wise moderns.

As I write this, I hear out of the window a man beating his wife and calling her names. Is this what is meant by good-nature and domestic comfort? Or is it that we have so little of these, ordinarily speaking, that we are astonished at the smallest instances of them; and have never done lauding ourselves for the exclusive possession of them?

I believe in the theoretical benevolence, and practical malignity of man. Mon. Mag.

Illustrations of History.

DEGRADATION OF A KNIGHT COMPANION OF THE GARTER.

The ensigns of the order are not to be withdrawn from a knight during life, unless he be found guilty of some of those marks of reproach set dewn in King Henry VIII.'s statutes; viz. Heresy, Treason, or flying from battle. It has sometimes been found that prodigality has been made a fourth point, when a knight has so far wasted his estate as to be incapable of supporting his dignity. The pretence for divesting William Lord Paget, was "his not being a gentleman of blood both by father and mother!" Felony comes not within the compass of those statutes, as not being expressly mentioned among the reproaches there summed up, and so it was adjudged in a chapter 14 Jac. I., in the case of Robert, Earl of Somerset, then lately condemned for felony, whereupon his hatchments were not removed.

When a Knight Companion is found guilty of any of the offences mentioned in Henry VIII.'s statutes, he is usually degraded at the next chapter, of which the Sovereign gives the Knights Companions previous notice; and then commands the Garter to attend such of them as are appointed to go to the Convicted Knight, who, in a solemn manner, first takes from him the George and Ribbard, and next his Garter; and at the ensuing feast of St. George, or sooner, if the Sovereign appoint it, publication of his crimes and degradation is made by Garter. Next Garter, by warrant to that purpose, takes down his atchievements, the officers of arms and

Black Rod standing around him. He then reads aloud the instruments of degradation, after which, one of the heralds placed ready on a ladder set to the back of the convict Knight's stall, at the words "expelled and put from among the arms,” takes his crest, and violently casts it down into the choir; after that, his banner and sword; and the publication being read out, all the officers of arms spurn the atchievements out of the choir of St. George's Chapel into the body of the Church; so out of the west door, thence to the bridge, and over into the ditch. Thus it was at the degradation of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, 16 Henry VIII. Their armorial bearing plates are likewise taken down from their stalls, and indignantly thrown away!

Degradation alone not being thought sufficient, it was deputed, in chapter 32 Henry VIII., whether the names of such Knights Companions as were convicted of treason, should remain in the regis ters, or be razed out: When it was determined, that wheresoever the actions or names of such offenders should be found, these words, " Vah Proditor" should be written in the margin; by which means the register would be preserved fair. There have been instances of Knights Companions having suffered degradation living to be restored, being re-elected and re-invested, and their atchievements set up by the indulgence of the next reign; as were the Lord Paget, 1st Mary, and the Marquis of Northampton, 1st Elizabeth, as likewise the Duke of Norfolk, 1st Mary.

The Note Book.

I will make a prief of it in my Note-pook. M. W. of Windsor.

WEDDING RINGS.

The ring used in the marriage contract, is supposed to have originated with the Jews, and the custom to have been adopted by the first Christians. The wearing the ring on the fourth finger was common to the Greeks, because as Aul. Gellius informs us, they had discovered from anatomy, that this finger had a little nerve that went straight to the heart, and therefore they esteemed it the most honourable from its be ing connected with that noble part.

CHILTERN HUNDREDS.

This appellation is given to a range of hills extending from Tring in Hertfordshire, to Henley in Oxfordshire,

the nominal acceptance of the stewardship of which, with a salary of twenty shillings, and all fees, &c. under the gift of the crown, incapacitates any one from being a member of the House of Commons, and is therefore resorted to by those who are desirous of resigning their seats in parliament.

AN ECHO.

Echo is to the ear what recollection is to the mind, each brings back the past, restores lost enjoyments, augments our satisfactions, and enriches our mental store. The man of mind has memory's echo ever at command; his tongue can, after a lapse of time, recover again sweet sounds; his declamation can revive eloquence of another age; the books which he has perused with attention, live fresh in his remembrance, and, like echo, speak to him invisibly, and present themselves again to his view.

THE MISLetoe.

Towards the end of this month, the misletoe is in great request, to decorate the rooms, and to give licence to romps and gallantry. The singularity of the growth and form of the misletoe brought it into repute among the Druids, for the purpose of mystical superstition, and its use has thence been continued many centuries afterwards, so difficult is it to eradicate any thing of this sort from the minds of the people, when once it is fairly rooted. It was long thought to be impossible to propagate this plant. In the natural state, the seeds are said to be dropped by the misle thrush, which feeds on the berries. Lately, however, it has been successfully propagated, by causing the bruised berries, which are very viscid, to adhere to the bark of such fruit trees as have been found most congenial to their growth. Upon the bark of these the seeds readily germinate and take root.

Customs of Warious Countries.

GREEK MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.

Webster, in his interesting travels through the Crimea, Turkey, and Egypt, thus describes the solemnization of a marriage according to the Greek rite, which he witnessed.

"A temporary altar was raised, on the right of which were the men, and on the left were the women. The bride and bridegroom both wore crowns. The bride was dressed as a

girl-her head without cap or kerchief, her hair hanging down behind in a long plaited tail, and flowers over her forehead. Both bride and bridegroom held a candle. The priest presented a tumbler of wine to the lady, which she, crossing herself, tasted, and handed to her future lord. This was repeated thrice, and the last time the bridegroom emptied the glass. The priest then tied the left hand of the man to the right hand of the woman, and led them thrice round the altar, stopping each time, and the people chaunting. He then took off the crowns, which they kissed; and, the husbar.d having thrice embraced his wife, the ceremony was finished.

"The bride now, accompanied by all the females, retired into a corner, where she put on the dress of a married woman; her hair was bound up-a handkerchief, worn only by the married, tied over it, and the whole habiliment changed.

"In the meantime, the bridegroom stood smiling and looking up as if he knew not how to look. He then received a carved and gilded picture of the nativity: holding which before him, and attended by his wife he set out, the spectators following in his train."

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Diary and Chronology.

Wednesday, December 1.

St. Eligius or Eloy, Bishop, A.D. 659.-High Water 4m after 2 Morn-4m af er 3 Aftern. Our saint is called not only Eloy, but Loy, and is vulgarly regarded as the patron of blacksmiths.

December 1, 1782.-Information was received this day from Captain Inglefield, at the Admiralty, of the loss of His Majesty's ship Centaur, of 74 guns, which foundered in the Atlantic, wear the Azores; nearly all the crew perished, and those which escaped in the boats underwent considerable hardships from hunger, thirst, and fatigue, which caused the death of several; and, out of the whole crew of 650 men, only 12 men, besides the captain and a boy, arrived at Fyal, one of the Azores, in a most wretched condition.

Thursday, December 2.

Sun rises bim after 7-sets 4m after 4.

December 2, 1554-Expired at a village near Seville, in the South of Spain, Ferdinand Cor. tez, a Spanish general, famous for his conquest of Mexico, but infamous for the cruelties be committed upon the vanquished, without regard to rank, age, or sex. He was born in 1491, at Madelin, in Estramadura.

Friday, December 3.

St. Sola, Hermit.-High Water 11m after 4 Morn-34m after 4 Afternoon. December 3, 1826.-Died John Flaxman, Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy. He was an excellent Greek and Latin scholar, and his mind seems to have been early imbued with that classic feeling and taste which it is essential for a historical sculptor to possess; and which laid the foundation of his future celebrity. Among his most celebrated performances may be mentioned the series of designs he made to illustrate the Iliad and Odyssey, Eschylus, and the works of Dante, whilst resident at Rome; and the illustrations of Hesiod made on his return to England; these sublime efforts, with his numerous splendid sepulchral monuments, gained for him a higher reputation than any other artist ever acquired in our country, save Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Saturday, December 4.

St. Osmund, Bishop, A.D 1099.-Sun rises 59m after 7-sets Im after 4. December 4, 1771.-In consequence of the great inundations experienced on the northern coast, Solway Moss, which lies on the borders of Scotland, ten miles north of Carlisle, began to swell with the inundation, and rose to such a height above the level, that it rolled forwards like a torrent, and continued its course above a mile, carrying with it houses, trees, and every thing else in its way; it covered nearly 600 acres, and lay in different places from two to twenty feet deep; it divided itself into islands of various extent, from one to ten feet in thickness, upon which were found bares, moor-game, &c.; there were thirty villages of five or six houses each destroyed by it, and a great number of cattle. It began to move on Saturday, and continued in motion for several days; this surprising phenomenon brought multitudes of people from all parts of the country to view it.

Sunday, December 5.

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT.

Lessons for the Day-5 chapter Isaiah, morning- chapter Isaiah, Even. December 5, 1820-Expired Samuel Rousseau, author of several works on oriental lite rature, Flowers of Persian Literature, Dictionary of Mahommedan Law, Persian and English Vocabulary, and other useful publications. For his knowledge of the ancient and oriental languages, he was indebted solely to his own industry and application during the leisure hours of his profession, which was that of a printer, while serving his apprenticeship in the office of Mr. Nichols.

Monday, December 6.

St. Theophilus, b. of Antioch,,A.D. 190-High Water 18m after 6 More-35m after 6 After. December 6, 1670-To-day was interred Henry Jenkins, in Bolton church-yard, few miles east of York, a person of obscure birth, but of a life truly memorable; for he was enriched with the goods of nature, if not of fortune; and happy in the duration, if not the variety of his enjoyments; and though the partial world might have despised his humble state, the equal eye of Providence beheld and blessed it with a patriarch's health and length of days, to teach mis taken mortals that these inestimable blessings only attend temperance, a life of labour, and a mind at ease. The subject of our notice lived to the amazing age of one hundred and sixtynine years; he was in the outset of his life a fisherman, and in the latter part he followed the pursuit of a peasant.

Tuesday, December 7.

Vigil of the Conception.- Moon's Last Quar, 16m after 3 Morning. December 7, 1815-Shot for treason pursuant to his sentence, Marshal Ney, at the extre mity of the grand alley leading to the Observatory in the gardens of the Luxembourg; and the next day his remains were interred in the burial ground of Pere la Chaise.

On the 1st of December was published Part 39, enlarged to six Numbers, including the CREAM OF THE ANNUALS for 1831, and illustrated with six Fine Original Engravings.

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