within, and they hastened to her aid. The matron Margery, halfdressed, and enveloped in a large cloak to supply the place of the other half, with the lantern swinging in her palsied hand, came first, and was followed by three other female inmates of the cottage, each more afraid than the other. The tale was soon told; but strange to relate! instead of its arousing them to do something for the apparently lost Katherine, it filled them with such terror and affright, that each hurried back to the cottage, where they all remained; every sense, faculty, and feeling frozen, until the approach of dawn inspired them with courage enough to request their male neighbours to go in quest of the unfortunate maid. These hastened to the church-yard, and soon discovered the object they were in search of, seated in the narrow porch, amusing herself by scratching the wall with the fatal instrument which she had employed on the preceding night. To see her, was sufficient evidence that the gentle "Kate was crazed!" A maniac's loquacity soon furnished a clue to what poor Katherine had seen. Its burden was still "Robert-faithful Robert;" whose shrouded ghost had greeted her :—at least the hapless maiden fancied So. And what wonder that it should, seeing that he had been numbered with the dead some months before. The fact was this-that at the period already referred to, when his correspondence with his betrothed suddenly ceased, he had fallen a victim to an epidemic disease, which, in the space of a few hours, gave another tenant to the greedy grave. Kate lived for many years after the above sad event; but lived only to be the object of pity and compassion to all who had known her in her happier days. When, however, I visited her ancient haunts, some two or three years ago, I was informed that she, too, "had fallen asleep." HAL. STANZAS. SHE droop'd-as droops the lotus-flower When summer eves are dim, And softly swells from minster tower The holy vesper-hymn. Stray'd there a wild bee o'er its breast,— A gale across the stream; To sear its fair transparent vest, Or mar its mystic dream? The wild bee wander'd not,-the gale Slept on the dimpling well ; And none beheld how purely pale Those dew-bent clusters fell, As beautifully wan-as meek As silently declining She droop'd, for whom these eyes are weak, This woe-worn heart repining. No burst of sorrow rent the link Uniting soul with clay; Like lotus-flower from river's brink, MAGNET, VOL. IV. PART XXVI. .C. D. M. 21) CASTLE BUILDING. Well may sleep present no fictions, As make life itself a dream. Campbell. WHO is he that does not at times indulge in the delightful, though vain and visionary amusement of building castles in the air? The sage, the sophist, the man of business, and the man of pleasure, are all castle builders, however their pursuits may differ and their structures may vary. Hope is the enchanter whose magic wand produces those fair illusions, those day-dreams of our life, which differ only from our nightly visions in having less of fiction in their forms, and more of nature in their colours. In sleep we behold the wild and wonderful; the improbable and the impossible pass before us without our appearing to notice their extravagance. A voyage round the world, or a flight to the moon, is an enterprize which we no sooner conceive than we accomplish; for, when Reason no longer guides the helm, our good ship, the brain, is at the sport of every wind and wave. But our daily visions, however extravagant they may be, have generally some foundation, some remote contingency on which they may be said to be founded. The poor woman going to market, in the fable, built her splendid castles on the anticipated sale of her basket of eggs; and although by a premature toss of her head, she destroyed for ever the simple basis of her golden visions, still her calculations were not so utterly extravagant as to exceed the limits of possibility. The freaks of fancy, produced by disease or inebriety, are not, properly speaking, castles in the air; they partake more of the incoherency of dreams, and therefore, we exclude from our remarks the ravings of insanity, the flights of the distempered poet, and the wanderings of the opium-eating Turk. Youth is the prime season for building castles in the air: it is then that we love to soar "To Fancy's highest heaven!" Life appears like a garden of eternal sweets, and we long to break our fetters and ramble unconfined through its pleasant paths. Who does not remember the sweet days of his boyhood, when, with the odour of flowers around us, fresh as our young thoughts, the birds singing on the trees, and the streams murmuring at our feet, we have sat for the length of a summer's evening building castles in the air! It is certain, the visions which we then indulged in wanted the colours of truth, but were they the less lovely for their rainbow tints? If, as it is somewhere asserted, the chief pleasure of our life arises from our being well deceived, he whose fancy is the warmest, and whose hopes are longest on the wing, is. surely the gayest, if not the happiest of men. Accordingly we find that poets, notwithstanding the many crosses and privations to which they are continually subject, are a race of hair-brained, reckless mortals who, breathing the warm atmosphere of Faney, and dwelling continually on some fond conceit, seem to despise the cold and common-place realities by which they are surrounded. They never contemplate the chance of failing in a favourite scheme. No sooner do they send a work into the world, than Fortune is to open her treasury, and shower its riches at their feet. Edition is to succeed edition faster than the printers can furnish a supply, and they pity the short-sighted booksellers who declined at their own hazard to usher their rhymes into public notice. Poets never calculate like common mortals. To them Hope is a substantial being, and her airy promises become palpable realities. If she but whisper in their ear the prospect of a distant good, they eagerly await its arrival without once considering the chances that may finally retard it, or the fickle nature of her by whom they were beguiled. The sober calculation of pounds, shillings, and pence, is below the notice of him, whose muse, having exhausted the treasures of the visible world, can turn to imaginary regions, and banquet on ideal sweets. To such a being, a happy simile is worth a thousand dinners, and a verse turned according to his wishes, is of more value than a purse of ducats. The following lines of Thomson may be quoted as expressive of the disregard which poets, above all other beings, entertain for the smiles of the fickle deity :— "I care not, Fortune, what you me deny, Through which Aurora shows her bright'ning face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living stream at eve: Let Health my nerves and finer fibres brace, Of Reason, Fancy, Virtue, nought can me bereave." Every man has some favourite hobby, and every season of our lite presents some new excitement. Philosophers themselves, with all their contempt for the folly of human speculations, are not without their airy castles. Some favourite theory presents itself to their fancies, and on it they build, till the structure, like that of Babel, becomes too mighty for their powers. The gamester, the most mischievous of castle builders, fancies that he can limit his hopes of independence to a certain sum, to obtain which he risks his all, and generally dies in misery and want. The merchant, more cautious, is at first content with moderate profit, till one speculation begets another, and the desire of gain takes so deep a hold of his nature, that it occupies his every thought. Having realized twice the sum which, when he first embarked in business, was to be the final reward of his labours, he finds that he is not yet independent enough to retire from busy life, and enjoy the fruits of his industry. The quiet villa and the domestic comforts, to which he was wont to look forward with such anxious delight, are now too mean for his enlarged ideas. A palace and a park have caught his eye, and he is determined to enjoy his otium cum dignitate-with the splendour of a prince. But, alas! a ruinous speculation in the funds, together with the loss of a rich ship, and the failure of a foreign house with which he was nearly connected, have reduced his airy castles, and left him beggared and undone ! Happy is the man who can limit his wishes and confine his views to the station which he fills, without seeking to endanger his present en joyments, by a rash endeavour to possess others which, after all, will not make him more contented with his lot, but will probably cause him to push his wishes still further-till he finds happiness, like the horizon by which he is surrounded, a distant good, that retreats as he pursues, and mocks his every hope. The man whose philosophy I most admire, is my excellent friend Tom Benson. Tom entered life under no very favourable auspices, having been deprived of both his parents before he was sensible of their loss. On his coming of age, he found that he was left nothing but his good sense and a thousand pounds to fight his way through the world. His friends advised him to enter business, and pointed out to him a variety of speculations, by which, they told him, he might improve his fortune at little risk. But Tom was no castle builder; his motto was— "Timely enjoy the present bliss, Nor in what may be, lose what is.” He preferred a small annuity with contentment to the precarious chance of amassing a fortune at the hazard of losing his all. He retired to the country, took a small cottage, limited his wants and wishes to his means, paid his debts, smoked his cigar, and was happy. G. L.A. THE WORLD'S WANDERER.* TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Will thy pinions close now? Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray Weary wind, who wanderest No: the billow roams, like thee, ; And the dancing bough must be Tell me, then, thou unsphered light Star, or moon, or wind, or wave! To quench my fires, and rest. The three first stanzas are by Shelley; the three last are by a Correspondent of the LITERARY MAGNET. THE EPPING GIPSEY. A TRUE STORY. In the summer of the year 1793, the Forest of -Epping became the resort of a numerous clan of Gipseys, whose depredations on the surrounding farm-houses rendered them exceedingly obnoxious to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, by whom they were viewed with considerable apprehensions, not only on account of their disposition to plunder, but from the well known ferocity of a portion of the gang. Scarcely a night passed without a robbery having been committed; and so daring were the marauders, that farmers were attacked on the public highway, and robbed and ill-treated, at noon-day. The magistrates of the county were applied to without effect; for the local constables, who acted under their directions, and who were generally petty farmers, were too timid to enter the precincts of these formidable freebooters, either to search for stolen property, or to execute a warrant of arrest; so that the gipseys had little to apprehend from the power of the law. Indeed, the best policy under the circumstances seemed to be, to wink at the loss of a stray sheep or a few geese, to treat a chance member of the gipsey camp with a cup of your home-brewed ale, or to toss a few halfpence amongst their little ragged, sun-burnt children, who would often wander to the neighbouring villages to seek for what they could pick up. Thanks to the excellent arrangement of our police, and our able and efficient magistracy, things are now in a better state. The gipseys, although in may parts of England and Scotland they are still to be seen hovering on the outskirts of society, are a declining race, and in a few years more will, in all probability, become totally extinct. Aware that their mode of life is unlawful, and that they are rather endured than protected in a country where good order is so strongly enforced, they are cautious how they commit the least excess, lest they should draw upon their heads the terrors of the law. But up to the close of the last century, the name of gipsey was generally coupled with that of robber, and every species of excess was committed by these reckless vagrants. The leader of the formidable gang, to which we have just referred, was named George Young, whose first breath was drawn in a gipsey tent, and whose limbs, from that moment to the hour of his death, never rested on a softer bed than that which the bare earth afforded. His temper and habits partook naturally of the wild life in which he had been reared. He was bold, determined, and ferocious, added to which, he possessed a constitution of robust health, and a frame of great muscular strength and activity. Unaided as he was by the advantages resulting from education, he at times displayed no mean capacity; and he had something in his demeanour and appearance, which seemed to raise him far above those with whom he was associated. He appeared ardently attached to the life he had chosen; and he has been known to declare, that he would not exchange his condition for a bed of down and a home of luxury. According to the most authentic account which we have been enabled to gather of his person, he was nearly six feet in |