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frame appeared as if shaken by a slight convulsion, and then the countenance was calin, and grave, and passionless as ever. He raised his eye slowly from the ground, and fixing it full on me, asked, in his usual low and soft accents, "Does my brother see the trail of a bad dog?" My reply was "I see it; let us follow!" and I set forth upon the the track. The Indian remained in the rear; his head hung heavily, and he seemed to drag his limbs after him as though they performed their office most unwillingly. He was like a man moving in a dream,-in that passive state of being wherein volition is stagnant, or suspended, and the power of a spell draws you wearily onward in the appointed course. I could not immagine the cause of his dejection. Murder and cannibalism could have been no new things to him; the corpse of the murdered, the relics of the devoured, must have been sights familiar to him from his childhood. Why should they now work upon him after so strange a fashion? We reached the low woods, and here we found severel tracks along the walks of the Alpine hare, wherein snares were set. This proved that some human being was near. We came upon a track; it was well nigh fresh; it was evidently that of an Indian woman. Neegonaubee gazed on it for a moment, wildly and listlessly; but in the next his eye lightened, and he stood once more erect; and removing the covering from his gun, he examined the flint, and renewed the priming. We proceeded rapidly in the track,-the Indian now leading the way with inclined body and expanded nostril. We had not advanced more than a couple of hundred yards, when he exclaimed, Scude! (fire); and soon after we, too, first smelt smoke, and next saw it darkling in the cold thin atmosphere in fantastic feathers, it proceeded from a wigwam, which was entirely concealed from the eye by the drifted snow, presenting as it did simply the appearance of a hillock. We approached the wigwam, -entered it; a woman was seated on the fir-brush which was strewed upon the floor; the walls were hung round with rabbit-skins, and some rabbits were boiling in a kettle on the fire. The woman rose not, but just looked up for an instant at the party, and then cast down her eyes. Cleuster asked her, in her own tongue, what had been the face of our people? She made no reply. After waiting some time, I addressed her, with the authority which belonged

to the great chief; still she answered not. But after a short pause she muttered some words, without raising her eyes or altering her position, from which we could gather, that the men had died of starvation soon after the lake was covered with the first ice; that the provisions they had brought with them had failed, and that they caught no fish. Hitherto, Neegonaubee had remained silent and motionless; but his eye having now caught_among the billets of fire-wood, a parcel, covered with the bark of the birch, and tied with the delicate fibres of pine-root, he took it up, and found it contained a lump of human flesh, apparently cut from the buttock of a man. He held it in his outstretched hand towards the woman. She spoke not-gazed not— shuddered not; but raised herself slowly from the ground, and stood with her head hanging on her breast," and her blanket gathered close around her. The Indian let fall the flesh from his hand, placed the muzzle of his gun against her breast, and fired. After a convulsive bound into the air, she fell a corpse. She was his sister,-his only surviving relative !-From passages and Life of an Idler in Fraser's Mag.

HABITS AND CHARACTER OF THE GERMAN PEASANTRY.

THE greater part of the day at Wabern is one unremitting fugue of cackling, crowing, grunting, lowing, and quacking-beating hemp, thrashing, and, if there be any other occupation belonging to a bucolic life, here you have it in full work. Both men and women resume their diurnal task at two o'clock in the morning in summer, and keep at it until nightfall. To their laborious habits it must be owing, that the females of the servile order, in this country have a breadth of shoulder, extent of threw, and procerity of limb, I would venture to swear, not to be found in any part of the habitable earth. They really quite outman our sex. In all other animals but the human, the males are, I believe, most usually remarkable for beauty. Here they make good the general analogy. Instead of a peeping ankle," you have a calf of brawn, in full display, under a petticoat reaching no lower than a little under the knee, whose owner steps along at her ease, a full geometrical yard and a half at a stride. It was, no doubt, women 'such as these that Cæsar's soldiers had a view of when his army became panic

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yellow, but rather between yellow and a straw colour, covering layers of diversified lines, between yellow and sandy, a good deal like the lime-burnt hair in mortar. As to the hos artus, et hæc corpora quæ miramur, I much doubt whether either one or other have fined down a single inch since the days of Ariovistus. Gibbon and Ovid, I remember, take considerable pains to account for the advantage the German women have over other countries in point of chastity. Allowing them the most ample credit for veracity, there seems little in the remark that should puzzle the naturalist. Out of Otaheite there is perhaps nothing of feminine less likely to tempt the virtue of our sex. If my reader can figure to himself a Thames waterman or Greenwich pensioner coquetting in petticoats, he may arrives at once at a more accurate description of what I would in vain attempt to express by a more laboured description of the personality of these females.

struck with the apprehended physical force of this people. But the males are by no means in proportion masculine. The costume of the sex is appropriate. The head is bagged, or trussed, in a sort of night-cap, tied close under the chin, the top of which casing is pursed, into a knob stuffed with their hair, and from this a long cue or two of plaited tresses depend to the waist, if waist it can be called, which preserves its diameter undiminished one inch from the shoulder to the hip. So much for the exterior. As to their morals, we must by no means rate them, I fear, by our very refined notions of Arcadia. Among the virgins, there are few who, before the age of fifteen, have not complied punctually with the primary commandment. It may, doubtless, be some extenuation of the licences taken in this matter, that Wabern, humble as it is, contains a whole troop of strapping dragoons. We are assured, by way of set-off against this laxity of manners, that the conduct of the married ladies much more than makes up for the frailties of their unwedded sisters, and that however the village may be off for Josephs, there is nothing approaching Potiphar's wife to be heard of from one end to the other. These freedoms with the decalogue will appear the more unaccountable when it is known that there is a standing regulation of the elector's, which, in every case of bastardy, devolves the whole responsibility on the woman, who is required to support her offspring until they are able to support her, which, when industry fails, they do by begging from door to door: and, over and above this, it is made penal in such circumstances for a woman to inculpate anybody as the father..

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"Nothing can be imagined more opposed to that charm and weakness of woman,' in which, Gibbon tells us, resides so much of the fascination of the sex, than the appearance of the female peasantry. They are, if possible, a whole century of civilisation more clumsy than even their Wabern rivals. To their slavish habits, no doubt, is owing much of this marvellous coarseness. In their very teens they become masculine; and at a little more advanced age, positively hirsute beyond the power of any patent depilatory. Among the rustics of these villages, I think I could observe much more of the lingering remains of the aboriginal crinis rutilus than in the higher ranks of the community. Yet it is not exactly

"The character of the German nation has to me always been an enigma, or sort of convocdia discors. You find the most opposite qualities united in the same individual; politeness and bluntness, gaucherie and a dash of dandy, libertinism and a measured respect to appearance. It is a nation of fiddlers and philosophers, imaginative writers and heavy companions; dull and slow as their dray-horses, and yet, on emergencies, capable of the greatest exertions, mira diversitate naturæ, cum idem homines sic ament inertiam et oderint quietem. Backward of giving or taking affronts, brave in resenting them; attentive to all exterior observances of religion, but latitudinarians in their opinions; loyal to a proverb, yet with a strong desire for liberty, which they have not the power to assert; these are but a few of the antithetic traits which every day discloses in their character.

"A labourer's hire is his meat and two groschens, about twopence halfpenny, a-day, unless he happens to be employed in thrashing, in which case he usually makes a contract for a sixteenth measure of the whole quantity of grain he thrashes out. As the entire village resounds from end to end with this operation. I shall state a few particulars respecting it which are likely to escape a more fugitive traveller, or one less curious in re rustica. Thrashing here is executed with a skill unknown to a less musical people. ⠀ To be an ex

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pert thrasher it appears to me as requisite to have had a thrashing master as a master for any other given art or accomplishment. They thrash' with a perfect regard to time, in all the alternations of triple and common measure, making the transition from the one to the other with the greatest exactness. There are sometimes not fewer than seven or eight flails in concert: when it is a simple quartet, and one of the performers happens to drop out, which is frequently the case, the transition is immediately, and without the least interruption, into triplets. Occasionally the effect is graced by some very delicate gradations of forte and piano, rallentando, crescendo, morcendo, accellerando-and the whole executed with as much precision as if a note-book lay before each performer. When the piano is to be particularly delicate, the tips of the flails are used, which affords an opportunity of combining grace with dexterity; it is then the merest scarcely audible tap, and costs the least possible, effort. Then comes the crescendo, swelling into a tremendous barnechoing staccato-downright thrashing in fact; and what I particularly wish to enforce upon the farmer, the flail, during the whole movement, is never raised higher than the head, which I could not help especially taking a note of for the good of our practical agriculturists, when I recollected how much unnecessary brawn is expended on our thrashing-floor to no purpose. Thus we see his genius for music never forsakes the German in any situation or occupation of life; it follows him into his commonest employments; and no doubt there is advantage, on the principle of studio fullente laborem, in making it in all similar exertions a rythmical operation. What is the story of Amphion building his Thebes, but an allegorical illustration of the same benefit of lightening labour by music? The German thrasher has the advantage of the Theban architect, for he turns the labour itself into a kind of music, though

somewhat monotonous to be sure."

Varieties.

PROMOTION AT COURT.-The Duke of Grammont entered one day the closet of Cardinal Mazarine, without being announced. His eminence was amusing himself by jumping cross-legged against the wall. A less skilful courtier might have stammered excuses and

retired; but the Duke entered briskly, and cried, "I'll bet 100 crowns that I jump higher than your Eminence;" and the Duke and Cardinal began to jump together. Grammont took care to jump a few inches lower than the Cardinal; and was, six months afterwards, made Marshal of France.

REMARKABLE ANAGRAM.- -Pilate's question to our Saviour, "What is truth?" in the Latin vulgate stands thus :-"Quid est veritas?" These letters transposed make "Est vir qui adest." "It is the man before thee."

OPINIONS OF JEREMY TAYLOR.—if men did but know what felicity dwells in the cottage of a virtuous poor man,how sound he sleeps, how quiet his breast, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his provision, how healthy his morning, how sober his night, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart,-they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throng of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites, that fill the houses of the luxurious, and the hearts of the ambitious.

SWIFTNESS OF MEN. Men who are exercised in running out-strip horses; or at least hold their speed for a longer continuance. In a journey, too, a man will walk down a horse; and after they have both continued to proceed for several days, the horse will be quite tired, and the man as fresh as in the beginning. The king's messengers of Ispaban, who are runners by profession, go 108 miles in 14 hours. Hottentots outstrip lions in the chase, and savages who hunt the elk, tire down. and take it; and are said to have performed a journey of three thousand six hundred miles in less than six weeks.

MODERN DICTIONARY.

Distant Relations. People who imagine they have a claim to rob you if you are rich, and to insult you if you are poor.

Heart.-A rare article, sometimes found in human beings. It is soon, however, destroyed by commerce with the world, or else becomes fatal to its possessor.

Wealth. The most respectable quality of man.

Critic.-A large dog, that goes about unchained, and barks at every thing that he does not comprehend..

Doctor.-A man who kills you (o-day to save you from dying to-morrow.

Virtue. An awkward habit of acting differently from other people. A vulgar word.

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Illustrated Article.

THE BLACK MASK.*.

A LEGEND OF HUNGARY.

As the Danube approaches the an cient city of Buda, it traverses a vast and almost uninhabited plain, surrounded upon every side by rude and barren mountains. This tract, thickly wooded with forest trees of great age and size, is now called the "Black Forest" of Hungary, and has been long celebrated as the resort of the wild boar and the elk, driven by winter to seek a shelter and cover which they would in vain look for upon the rocky and steep mountains around: there, for at least five months of every year, might daily be heard the joyous call of the jager horn, and at night, around the blazing fires of the bivouac, might parties of hunters be seen carousing and relating the dangers of the chase. But when once the hunting season was past, the gloom and desolation of this wild waste was unbroken by any sound save the shrill cry of the vultures, or the scream

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of the wood squirrel as he sprang from bough to bough, for the footsteps of the traveller never trod this valley, which seemed as if shut out by nature from all intercourse with the remainder of the world. Hunting had been for years the only occupation of the few who inha bited it, and the inaccessible character of the mountains had long contributed to preserve it for them from the intrusion of others; but at length the chase became the favourite pastime of the young noblesse of Austria as well as Hungary; and to encourage a taste for the "mimic fight," as it has been not inaptly termed, the example of the reigning monarch greatly contributed. Not a little vain of his skill and proficiency in every bold and warlike exercise, he often took the lead in these exercises himself, and would remain weeks and even months away, joyfully enduring all the dangers and hardships of a hunter's life, and by his own daring, stimulate others to feats of difficult and hardy enterprise. Some there were, however, who thought they saw in this more than a mere fondness for a hun724

ter's life, and looked on it, with reason, perhaps, ashao deeply laid political scheme; that, by bringing the nobles of the two nations more closely into contact, nearer intimacy, and eventually friendships would spring up and eradicate that feeling of jealousy with which as rivals they had not ceased to regard each other. by

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It was the latter end of December of the year 1754; the sun had gone down and the shadows of night were fast fall ing upon the dreary valley, whilst upon the cold and piercing blast were borne masses of snow-drift and sleet, and the low wailing of the night wind foreboded the approach of a storm, that a solitary wanderer was vainly endeavouring to disentangle himself from the low brushwood, which heavy and snow-' laden, obstructed him at every step. Often he stood, and putting his horn to his lips, blew till the forest rang again with the sound, but nothing responded to his call save the dull and ceaseless roar of the Danube, which poured along its thundering flood, amid huge masses of broken ice or frozen snow, which, rent from their attachment to the banks, were carried furiously along by the current of the river. at To the bank of the Danube the wanderer had long directed his steps, guided by the noise of the stream; and he had determined to follow its guide ance to the nearest village, where he might rest for the night. After much difficulty, he reached the bank, and the moon which hitherto had not shone, now suddenly broke forth and showed the stranger to be young and athletic; his figure, which was tall and commanding, was arrayed in the ordinary hunting dress of the period; he wore a green frock or kurtha, which, trimmed with fur, was fastened at the waist by a broad strap of black leather; from this was suspended his jaged messer, or couteau de chasse, the handle and hilt of which were of silver richly chased and ornamented; around his neck hung a small bugle, also of silver, and these were the only parts of his equipment which bespoke him to be of rank, save that air of true born nobis lity which no garb, however homely, can effectually conceal. His broad leafed bonnet with its dark o'erhanging herons feathers, concealed the upper part of his face but the short and cur ved moustache which graced his upper lip, told that he was either by birth Hungarian, or one who from motives of policy had adopted this national pe &t xlbasin wit 79.30 3uomulew ye

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culiarity to court favour in the eyes of Joseph, who avowed his preference for that country on every occasion. The first object that met his eyes as he looked anxiously around for some place of refuge from that storm, which long impending, was already about to break! forth with increased violence, was the massive castle of Cfervitzen, whose battlemented towers rose high above the trees on the opposite side of the Danube; between, however, roared the river, with the impetuosity of a mountain torrent, amid huge fragments of ice, which were either held by their attachment to rocks in the channel, or borne along till dashed to pieces by those sharp reefs so frequent in this part of the stream; he shuddered as he watched the fate of many a ledge office or snow now smoothly gliding on, and in the next moment shivered into ten thousand pieces, and lost in the foam and surge of " the dark rolling river.” He seemed long to weigh within himself the hazard of an attempt to cross the stream upon these floating islands with the danger of a night passed in the forest; for he now knew too well, no village lay within miles of him. But at last he seemed to have taken his resolution; for, drawing his belt tightly around him and throwing back his jag'd messer lest it should impede the free plays of his left arm, he seemed to prepare him self for the perilous undertaking this was but the work of one moment the next saw him advancing upon the broad ledge, which, frozen to the bank, stretched to a considerable distance in the stream. Now arrived at the verge of this came his first difficulty, for the passage was only to be accomplished by springing from island to island over the channels of the river, which ran narrowly though rapidly between;→→→ the loud crashes which every moment interrupted the silence of the night, as each fragment broke upon the rocks before him, told too plainly what fate awaited him, should he either miss his footing, or the ice break beneath his weight; in either case death would be inevitable. He once more looked back upon the dark forest he had left, and again seemed to hesitate; 'twas for an instant with a bold spring he cleared the channel. No time was, however, given him to look back on the danger he had passed; for scarcely had his feet reached their landing place, than the ice yielding to the impulse of his fall, gave way and separated with loud crash from its connection with the aruddies tutaona tuilt to toxroveoq sulf

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