him to lose the chance which the morning, however unpropitious it seemed, in its external aspect, might yield him of profiting by the turn of a fraction.

He was a stout-built, round-shouldered, squab-looking man, of a bearish aspect. His features were hard, and his heart was harder. You could read the interest-table in the wrinkles of his brow, trace the rise and fall of stocks by the look of his countenance; while avarice, selfishness, and money-getting, glared from his gray, glassy eye. Nature had poured no balm into his breast; nor was his " gross and earthly mould" susceptible of pity. A single look of his would daunt the most importunate petitioner that ever attempted to extract hard coin by the soft rhetoric of a heart-moving tale.

The wife of one whom he had known in better days, pleaded before him for her sick husband, and famishing infants. Jacob, on occasions like these, was a man of few words. He was as chary of them as of his money, and he let her come to the end of her tale without interruption. She paused for a reply; but he gave none. "Indeed, he is very ill, Sir."- -"Can't help it."- "We are very distressed." "Can't help it."-"Our poor children, too"Can't help that neither."

The petitioner's eye looked a mournful reproach, which would have interpreted itself to any other heart but his, "Indeed, you can ;" but she was silent. Jacob felt more

awkwardly than he had ever done in his life. His hand involuntarily scrambled about his breeches' pocket. There was something like the weakness of human nature stirring within him. Some coin had unconsciously worked its way into his hand-his fingers insensibly closed; but the effort to draw them forth, and the impossibility of effecting it without unclosing them, roused the dormant selfishness of his nature, and restored his self-possession.

"He has been very extravagant."—" Ah, Sir, he has been very unfortunate, not extravagant."-" Unfortunate!Ah! it's the same thing. Little odds, I fancy. For my part, I wonder how folks can be unfortunate. I was never unfortunate. Nobody need be unfortunate, if they look after the main chănce. I always look after the main chănce." -"He has had a large family to maintain."-" Ah! married foolishly; no offence to you ma'am. But when poor folks marry poor folks, what are they to look for? know. Besides, he was so foolishly fond of assisting others.

you

If a

friend was sick, or in gaol, out came his purse, and then his creditors might go whistle. Now if he had married a woman with money, you know, why then.

The supplicant turned pale, and would have fainted. Jacob was alarmed; not that he sympathized, but a woman's fainting was a scene that he had not been used to: besides, there was an awkwardness about it; for Jacob was a bachelor.

Sixty summers had passed over his head without imparting a ray of warmth to his heart; without exciting one tender feeling for the sex, deprived of whose cheering presence, the paradise of the world were a wilderness of weeds. -So he desperately extracted a crown piece from the depth profound, and thrust it hastily into her hand. The action recalled her wandering senses. She blushed-it was the honest blush of pride at the meanness of the gift. She curt'sied; staggered towards the door; opened it; closed it; raised her hand to her forehead, and burst into tears.* * * *

LESSON CI.

The Highlander.-W. GILLESPIE.

Many years ago, a poor Highland soldier, on his return to his native hills, fatigued, as it was supposed, by the length of the march and the heat of the weather, sat down under the shade of a birch-tree, on the solitary road of Lowrin, that winds along the margin of Loch Ken, in Galloway. Here he was found dead, and this incident forms the subject of the following verses.

FROM the climes of the sun, all war-worn and weary,
The Highlander sped to his youthful abode;
Fair visions of home cheered the desert so dreary;

Though fierce was the noon-beam and steep was the road.
Till spent with the march that still lengthened before him,
He stopped by the way in a syivan retreat;
The light shady boughs of the birch-tree waved o'er him,
And the stream of the mountain fell soft at his feet.

He sunk to repose where the red heaths are blended,
One dream of his childhood his fancy past o'er;
But his battles are fought, and his march.... it is ended;
The sound of the bagpipe shall wake him no more.

No arm in the day of the conflict could wound him,
Though war lanched her thunder in fury to kill;
Now the angel of death in the desert has found him,
Now stretched him in peace by the stream of the hill.
Pale Autumn spreads o'er him the leaves of the forest,
The fays of the wild chant the dirge of his rest;,
And thou, little brook, still the sleeper deplorest,

And moisteneth the heath-bell that weeps on his breast.

LESSON CII.

The Harvest Moon.-W. MILLAR.
ALL hail! thou lovely queen of night,
Bright empress of the starry sky!
The meekness of thy silvery light
Beams gladness on the gazer's eye,
-While from thy peerless throne on high
Thou shinest bright as cloudless noon,
And bidd'st the shades of darkness fly
Before thy glory-Harvest moon!
In the deep stillness of the night,
When weary labor is at rest,

How lovely is the scene!-how bright

The wood-the lawn-the mountain's breast,

When thou, fair Moon of Harvest! hast

Thy radiant glory all unfurled,

And sweetly smilest in the west,

Far down upon the silent world.

Dispel the clouds, majestic orb!

That round the dim horizon brood,
And hush the winds that would disturb
The deep, the awful solitude,

That rests upon the slumbering flood,
The dewy fields, and silent grove,
When midnight hath thy zenith viewed,
And felt the kindness of thy love.
Lo scattered wide beneath thy throne,
The hope of millions richly spread,
That seems to court thy radiance down
To rest upon its dewy bed:

Oh! let thy cloudless glory shed
Its welcome brilliance from on high,
Till hope be realized-and fled

The omens of a frowning sky.

Shine on, fair orb of light! and smile
Till autumn months have passed away,
· And Labor hath forgot the toil

He bore in summer's sultry ray;
And when the reapers end the day,
Tired with the burning heat of noon,
They'll come with spirits light and gay,
And bless thee-lovely Harvest Moon!

LESSON CIII.

Thalaba among the ruins of Babylon.—SOUTHEY.

THE many-colored domes*
Yet wore one dusky hue;
The cranes upon the mosque
Kept their night-clatter still;

When through the gate the early traveller pass'd.
And when, at evening, o'er the swampy plain
The bittern's boom came far,

Distinct in darkness seen,

Above the low horizon's lingering light,
Rose the near ruins of old Babylon.
Once, from her lofty walls the charioteer

Looked down on swarming myriads; once she flung
Her arches o'er Euphrates' conquered tide,
And, through her brazen portals when she poured
Her armies forth, the distant nations looked
As men who watch the thunder-cloud in fear,
Lest it should burst above them.-She was fallen!
The queen of cities, Babylon, was fallen!

Low lay her bulwarkst; the black scorpion basked
In palace courts: within the sanctuary

The she-wolf hid her whelps.

Is yonder huge and shapeless heap, what once
Hath been the aërial gardens, height on height
Rising, like Media's mountains, crowned with wood,

* Of Bagdad.

+ Pron. bul-wurks-u as in bull.

Work of imperial dotage? Where the fane
Of Belus? Where the golden image now,
Which, at the sound of dulcimer and lute,
Cornet and sackbut, harp and psaltery,

The Assyrian slaves adored?

A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon

Spreads o'er the blasted plain.

The wandering Arab never sets his tent
Within her walls. The shepherd eyes afar
Her evil towers, and devious drives his flock.
Alone unchanged, a free and bridgeless tide,
Euphrates rolls along,

Eternal nature's work.

Through the broken pōrtal,
Over weedy fragments,
Thalaba went his way.

Cautious he trod, and felt

The dangerous ground before him with his bow.
The jackal started at his steps;

The stork, alarmed at sound of man,
From her broad nest upon the old pillar top,
Affrighted fled on flapping wings:

The adder, in her haunts disturbed,
Lanced at the intruding staff her arrowy tongue.

Twilight and moonshine, dimly mingling, gave
An awful light obscure:
Evening not wholly closed-

The moon still pale and faint,—
An awful light obscure,

Broken by many a mass of blackest shade;

Long columns stretching dark through weeds and moss;
Broad length of lofty wall,
Whose windows lay in light,

And of their former shape, low-arched or square,
Rude outline on the earth

Figured with long grass fringed.

Reclined against a column's broken shaft,
Unknowing whitherward to bend his way,
He stood and gazed around.
The ruins closed him in :

It seemed as if no foot of man
For ages had intruded there.