a name! He is Bel-tenebroso; he has left his natal halls: it is just as I suspected, he is in love."-" La! Miss Alicia, how can you say so? I am sure he is not worth being in love with! Such a thin, sallow, withered, little mannikin. I would not say thank ye for a dozen such any day."

"A letter has come to the post office, directed U. U. Cauliflower Hut, to be forwarded immediately,' they were just going to send it up when the little man came down. Will you not come out and see him? he is such a queer little object, you cannot think."

On arriving at the library a stranger was standing at the counter, but unfortunately with his face entirely hidden from any one in the shop. He was engaged in reading, and accompanied the perusal with sundry pshaws! and hems! which, to Miss Alicia's excited imagination, bore a great resemblance to groans. She caught a glimpse of the point of a very snub nose, which was rather more red than the points of heroes' noses are imagined to be; and, in a husky voice, he muttered something to the librarian, of which only "miserable epistle," met the ears of Miss Alicia. Hoping to attract the stranger's attention, she simpered, as she turned over the leaves of a volume, "A delightful book! Oh, how I have wept over those unutterable woes!" The stranger turned about with wonder at this heroic speech, and gazed on the fair speaker. His eyes, which appeared red and bleared to Miss Tompkins, to Miss Alicia seemed swimming in tears, and inflamed with weeping.

"Yes!" she continued, "who could bear such treatment from a woman as he from his unkind Charlotte! I have sighed for hours over his misery, and shed many a tender happy tear over the sorrows of the disconsolate Werter!"-" My eyes!" cried the stranger, "have they got me down in a book already?"-" You, sir!" said Miss Alicia, in the greatest agitation, "you, sir! Do I then speak to the injured, loving, amiable, disconsolate, and afflicted Werter?"

"To be sure you do, all that, and an unconscionable deal more. 'Gad, madam, my sorrows are enough to drive a man mad."-" I congratulate myself. I am profoundly happy to have encountered the melancholy lover. So the ball had no effect? you did not kill yourself? you recovered? But you still love your Charlotte, still write to her in those touching strains, still kiss her hand-writing in return, though the drying-sand grit in your teeth ?"

During this address the little red-nosed gentleman looked utterly confounded. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the speaker: and after she had concluded he still gazed on her for some time, and slowly muttering "kill yourself, love your Charlotte, kiss her hand-writing with the sand gritting in your teeth,-poor lady! you're rather cracked in the upper story, I ex

pect." Saying this and shaking his head he walked out of the shop, and had disappeared before she recovered from her astonish

ment.

It is impossible to describe the feelings of Miss Alicia on this momentous occasion. Joy at meeting with so distinguished a character, and surprise at his unceremonious behaviour, together with an eager desire of discovering the cause of his retirement, threw the unhappy damsel into a fever of curiosity. Long did she ponder on the means to be pursued to acquire the wished-for information; and at last she resolved to carry on her approaches by means of an anonymous letter. Accordingly, next day, after many hours severe application, and going over all the romantic letters of the kind she had ever met with, she sent her one-eyed maid to Cauliflower Hut, with the following epistle; and recollecting that U. U. was the address mentioned by Miss Tompkins, she directed it "To the Un fortunate Unknown."

"One of the softer sex, whose bosom palpitates with sympathetic emotions, offers the tribute of her condolence to the Hermit of the Hut. To soothe the unhappy's woes, and pour the balm of consolation into the bosom of disaster, through the funnel of sympathy, is a task fit for angels, or even for Oriana herself. Thy sorrows, oh miserable and over-clouded with griefs! are well known. Thy Charlotte's cruelty has awakened an echo of platonism and pity for thee in every one who has a heart. But wherefore resign thyself to solitude and suffering? Wherefore mourn over the past, or, gracious Heaven! wherefore muse on the means of self-destruction? The pistol, once ineffectual, may be fatal next time. And oh! above all remember that thy Charlotte, hapless Werter! is the wife of another!"

After having despatched this sublime effusion, she waited impatiently the arrival of Mrs Tompkins and a few of the other village magnates to tea.—“ It is so odd,” said Miss Alicia, "that one so

:

well known should ever have come to settle in our quiet neighbourhood and he speaks English too remarkably well, but still I can trace the foreign accent."-" Is he a foreigner?" exclaimed Mrs Tompkins, in manifest alarm, "Dear me, I hope Mr T. has seen into his means, for it would be a great loss to us if he can't pay the fifteen pounds for the cottage."—“Oh, my dear Mrs Tompkins, if you had seen his letters; they breathe such purity of sentiments, such delicacy of thought, that though all his love is addressed to another's wife"-" Oh, the nasty, sallow-faced, red-nosed, little, ugly rascal! What! all that nonsense and flummery to another man's wife! I won't allow him to stay at the cottage! I have daughters to protect; and besides, who knows but the whip

per snapper might begin writing some of his abominable letters to

me!"

Mr Mordent was just smiling before one of his kind and friendly responses, when the door opened, and, to the horror of the whole party, the stranger himself walked into the room." Servant, ladies," he said, in the same husky voice as before, "I take the liberty of coming in here to ask if you haven't a girl, madam, as wants an eye?"—" I have, sir,” said Miss Alicia, "a domestic, who, by the will of fate and the blow of a stick, is deprived of one of her ocular members."-" I know'd it-and what the devil business have you, madam, for to send your blinking maid with this here letter to my house? Who told you as ever I was an Unfortunate Unknown ?"-" Sir," replied the lady, "deprived as you are of your Charlotte"-"My Charlotte!-I know I'm deprived of her; more's my luck in getting free from her: and how dared you for to say she was another man's wife?-She is my wife-worse luck, say I."

"I perceive, sir," said Mr Mordent, "you are a gentleman of great forbearance and observation. The lady I fear has mistaken you for another gentleman of the same name. A cousin german

most probably."

"Well, sir, that may be as it may. But it is rather too hard to be plagued with letters from a crazy old maid."" But oh! most melancholy Werter," sighed the bewildered Alice. "Whirter is my name, madam, since you will find people's names out-Samuel Whirter. I kept a shop in St Martin's Lane, and sold combs, silver thimbles, and such like, till my wife-Charlotte is her name -she takes it into her head to be master. Every thing was a going to rack and ruin; and she did not mind throwing things about -not a bit. She nearly pecked this here eye out with a real tortoiseshell comb, and dismolished two of my teeth with a lady's work box. So when she set off for her diversion down to Brighton, or some such place, I sold off the stock, and left her an allowance to be paid by a neighbour when she comes back ;-and I comes away down here with the property I have saved, hoping for peace and quietness; when, instead of that, I gets nothing but letters about sympathy, and balms, and funnels."

"So you are not Werter after all!" said Miss Alicia, "but only a merchant of combs and thimbles-how cruelly I have been de. ceived!"

THE WALL-FLOWER.*

'WHY loves my flower, the sweetest flower
That swells the golden breast of May,
Thrown rudely o'er this ruin'd tower,
To waste the solitary day?

'Why, when the mead, the spicy vale,
The grove and genial garden call,
Will she her fragrant soul exhale
Unheeded on the lonely wall?

For never sure was beauty born,
To live in death's deserted shade!
Come lovely flower, my banks adorn,
My banks for life and beauty made.'

Thus pity wak'd the tender thought;
And, by her sweet persuasion led,
To seize the hermit flower I sought,
And bear her from her stony bed.

I sought, but sudden on mine ear
A voice in hollow murmurs broke,
And smote my heart with holy fear-
The Genius of the Ruin spoke.

From thee be far th' ungentle deed,
The honours of the dead to spoil,

Or take the sole remaining meed,

The flower that crowns the former toil!

Nor deem that flower the garden's foe,
Or fond to grace this barren shade;

'Tis nature tells her to bestow

Her honours on the lonely dead.

'For this, obedient zephyrs bear

Her light seeds round yon turret's mould,

And undispers'd by tempests there,

They rise in vegetable gold.

'Nor shall thy wonder wake to see

Such desert scenes distinction crave;

Oft have they been, and oft shall be

Truth's, honour's, valour's, beauty's grave.

*From Langhorne's "Fables of Flora." This piece is remarkable as being one from which the Author of Waverley has taken several of his mottoes.

'Where longs to fall that rifted spire,
As weary of th' insulting air;
The poet's thought, the warrior's fire,
The lover's sighs are sleeping there.

When that, too, shades the trembling ground, Borne down by some tempestuous sky, And many a slumbering cottage round Startles-how still their hearts will lie!

Of them who, wrapp'd in earth so cold,
No more the smiling day shall view,
Should many a tender tale be told;
For many a tender thought is due.

Hast thou not seen some lover pale, When ev'ning brought the pensive hour, Step slowly o'er the shadowy vale,

And stop to pluck the frequent flower?

Those flowers he surely meant to strew
On lost affection's lowly cell,
Tho' there, as fond remembrance grew,-
Forgotten from his hand they fell.

Has not for thee the fragrant thorn
Been taught her first rose to resign?
With vain but pious fondness borne,
To deck thy Nancy's honour'd shrine!

'Tis nature pleading in the breast,
Fair memory of her works to find;
And when to fate she yields the rest,
She claims the monumental mind.

Why, else, the o'ergrown paths of time Would thus the letter'd sage explore, With pain these crumbling ruins climb, And on the doubtful sculpture pore?

Why seeks he with unwearied toil Through death's dim walk to urge his way, Reclaim his long-asserted spoil,

And lead Oblivion into day ?"