bered. Loud, sudden, cracking bursts of thunder, attended by vivid and forky lightnings, and furiously rushing blasts of wind, dispersed the terrified multitude. The alarmed executioner even fled from the spot, and it was not till the storm had subsided into a heavy continuous plashy rain, that he returned to look upon his work. A black scathedlooking spot was all the trace left of what had recently occurred there, from which, to his unutterable horror, crawled an innumerable swarm of blackbeetles, who spread themselves in all directions through the city.

IT was on the 5th November that I was present at the election at Ballston Spa, held in one of the hotels, about the door of which twenty or thirty people might be standing. My friend Mr. Brown introduced me, and got me a place at the table. I must confess that I have been seldom more disappointed at a public meeting. The excitement occasioned by the election generally was declared by the newspapers to be far greater than had ever been witnessed since the declaration of independence in 1776. And at Ballston Spa, any irritation which existed had been increased by an attack made a few days previous to the election by the local press, and by hand-bills, on the moral character of one of the candidates, a gentleman who had filled a high office in Congress, and who resided in the neighbourhood. I was therefore prepared for some fun, for some ebullition of humour, or of sarcastic remark, or dry wit, to which Americans are said to be prone. But all was dumb show, or the next thing to it. The ballot-boxes were placed at a long table, at which half a dozen of the inspectors or canvassers of votes were seated. The voters approached the table by single files. Not a word was spoken. Each voter delivered his list, when he got next to the table, to the officers, who called out his name. Any person might object, but the objection was instantly decided on, the officers having no difficulty, from their knowledge of the township, of the persons residing in it, and to whose testimony reference was instantly made, in determining on the spot, whether the qualification of the voter was or was not sufficient. I need hardly say, that I did not attend this exces

sively uninteresting sort of meeting for any long time; I am bound to bear this testimony in its favour, that so quiet a day of election, both without and within doors, I never witnessed either in Scotland or England. I did not see or hear of a drunk person in the street of the village or neighbourhood, nor did I observe any thing extraordinary, except the increased number of carriages and waggons of all kinds, three or four of them drawn by four horses, and one by six. We were residing close by the hotel where the election took place, and in the evening the tranquillity was as complete as if no election had occurred.

Stuart's Three Years in North America.

THE BRACELET.

"I shall lose money by this bracelet," quoth Monsieur Peront, as he reclined in an easy chair; nursing his legs, and looking thoughtful;—it was a leathern chair studded with brass nails.-Peront's eye was slowly wandering over the nail-heads, as if using them in his calculation: he had counted some score or two," I shall lose money by this bracelet," reiterated Peront, letting go his leg, and thrusting his hands somewhat sharply into his huge sixteenth-century side pockets. "You can afford it," replied his wife coolly.

"Humph!" groaned Peront; and the conversation ceased.

Monsieur Peront was a short thick man, with a large matter-of-fact sort of countenance, only rescued from the charge of stolidity, by a pair of keen, grey, shrewd looking eyes; it was the face of a man careful and prudent, yet tolerably well satisfied with the world and himself. His dress was arranged with sedulous neatness, and accorded well with his character, viz. a painstaking, God-fearing, wealthy citizen of Paris. He continued grumbling to himself, carrying on a sort of interjectional soliloquy, about loss and profit, gems and carcanets, rings and bracelets; then casting his eyes towards the ceiling, he continued gazing at a flickering beam which the evening sun, playing on the river Aa, created there, and carrying on a mental calculation concerning the subject most upon his mind. But whether the aforesaid refraction dazzled his eyes, and thereby refused his brain, or whether Monsieur Peront was in want of his usual afternoon's nap, or whether the braying of trum

pets, tramping of horses, shouts, screams, and a variety of noises, which resounded from the adjacent town of St. Omers, distracted his attention, is not known; suffice it to say, that he was as completely entangled and perplexed with his own reckoning as the dullest school-boy who ever scratched his head over a first sum in multiplication.-" Pish!" said he, shifting his position with vehemence, "the devil's in this bracelet and all that belongs to it. Did not I flaw one of the best diamonds in working on it? Did not Jean Pockard, my apprentice, steal some of my tools! Did not- but it's of no use talking, the devil's in the bracelet, and there's an end."

"And whose fault is that, Monsieur Peront?" said his wife, looking up from her work, "Why did you begin to make it on St. Martin's day, which you had vowed to keep holy ?"

"Santa Maria! Madame Peront," exclaimed he, crossing himself, "have not I given to the altar of St. Martin a candelabrum of massive silver chased"""Tis no matter-"

"No matter! Madame Peront! But I have confessed, and received absolution of the Abbe Eustache, think of that, Monsieur l'Abbe!-Monsieur l'Abbe!"

Madame Peront shook her head; she saw he was trying to stifle his Catholic conscience.

"The bracelet is ill fated," said she; you know it was to be given to Henry the Eighth of England by our own King Francis, (whom the Saints defend,) and Jacqueline tells me there are three strange rumours abroad: men say that their friendship, though it looks as gay as the gold cup you made for the Count Philip, is almost as hollow."

"Jacqueline is a false quean to say so," exclaimed the jeweller, "our king is as true as a Brussels balance, and for Henry-to be sure he wants polishing, so does our best salver, as you know very well, yet it is none the worse metal for that-if there be a false face amongst them it is that of the haughty English minister,-they say he's only the son of a butcher-I am a jeweller myself!' With that Monsieur Peront's sitting posture from an obtuse became an acute angle.

Madame Peront smiled.

Peront coloured.

""Tis an unlucky thing," said he, "and the sooner I get it out of my hands the better; I will take it to-morrow morning."

"You had better take it to-night." "Heavens! my dear, it is full ten miles to Ardres, and the road so thronged; but to-morrow it shall to the king, and the next day we will return to Paris. I am tired of all this pageantry."

"Humph!" quoth Madame Peront in her turn.

Peront took his hat and cloak and sallied forth; he lingered about the door of the house. It was a small detached habitation in which the jeweller and his wife had taken up their abode, during their temporary absence from Paris. It was constructed entirely of wood, with the exception of a long sloping roof of tiles. The narrow doorway was supported by oaken posts of enormous thickness, and several steps descended into the abode, each story projected considerably beyond the one below, so that the upper rooms nearly overhung the river Aa, which flowed before the house.

Peront gazed at the setting sun, and tried to trace the forms of castles, towers, and minarets, in the fantastic piles of snowy clouds which (edged with gold) sailed slowly along the evening sky. Then he leaned upon his cane, and watched the little whirlpools of the rapid gurgling stream, or the circling eddies with which a playful fish sometimes rippled its surface.

But this bracelet-this teasing bracelet-still haunted his mind; it was one of those vexatious inexplicable subjects which sometimes retain their power over the imagination with an obstinate tenacity, much more than adequate to their importance.

The fact is, Monsieur Peront was a rigid Catholic, not without a deep tinge of superstition in his nature; he had been induced by the ardent and impetuous Francis (whose enthusiastic temper brooked no delay) to infringe upon his vow, by commencing the manufacture of the bracelet upon a sacred day; and a series of fortuitous circumstances had so preyed upon the prejudiced mind of the jeweller, that he almost regarded the toy with a degree of mystical awe, by no means incompatible with the illiberal feelings of a bigoted Catholic,-at least of the sixteenth century.

Golden Legends.

GHOST STORIES; OR, SHADES OF THE DEPARTED.

FOR THE OLIO.

THE MILLER AND SEGERY BELL.

THAT the tongue of credulity speaks through the oral tradition of aboriginal descent, to the sons and daughters of men who have not passed the boundaries of their native hamlet and local inheritance is pretty evident. Ghost stories ever have been, are, and will be, popular. The enlightened mind that does not pin its faith to the delineature of supernatural appearances, is not more insensible to the fancied theory, than the stubborn, heartfelt, believer in, and the expositor of, spirits that walk the night and appear in the bodily shape of their delegated authorities. The climax of this story is believed by many to this day, to have existed in its prime character and interesting, but appalling, substance; and it is veraciously related by good tactitians in memory over the brown jug in a dark and cold evening near the haven of a winter's yule. There was only one bell in Seger (now called Seagry) church. This bell answered the several purposes for rejoicings, marriages, and burials. The same slatten sound issued forth its proclamations amid the wild sceneries and lonely abodes of the very few surrounding inhabitants. The church living, which, in the present day, would not be coveted at such a valuation, was only six pounds, fourteen shillings per annum, but the duties were few. The doors were opened for service only once every alternate Sunday;-then the priest came a little distance to perform his work to a few money-getting farmers, and their gazing sons and rosy-faced, plump, daughters. A miller lived not far below the church at the close of the meadows of Hungerdown, and a jocose man was he. Not very unlike the miller depicted by Chaucer in his Canterbury Pilgrims. This 'taker of double toll' who changed the wheat,' most humorously delighted in playing tricks with the monks at Dauntsey Manor. Sometimes he would leap into his flatbottomed boat, cross the Avon, and fix it on the opposite side of the water at Dodford, while he laid chains and ropes across the paths through which the brotherhood nightly passed from vespers, and speedily returned home to his grinding propensities, fraught with scarecrow notions, either to persecute or frighten those on whom his 'miller's

thumb' was set. On other whimsical occasions he would get into Seger church, and ring the bell to the dismay of those who beard the twanging sound. Sometimes a light was seen by some old vigil nurse, or shepherd peasant, blinking through the small stone window. The owls that lived in ivy, as snugly as hares in clover, or sparrows in thatch, patronised his designs by their screeching and hooting contributions; and the bats disturbed in their reveries, added supernatural appearances by their whirring incessantly through the gloom and the shadowed reflections of the foliage, when the moon shone out from the vassalage of clouds. The miller was a hardy and hardened, broad-shouldered wight, not susceptible of fear; for, if he possessed not a northern gift of seeing double, he certainly seemed to all that knew him to be out of the reach of danger, and could discern more than his neighbours; and he wore a mystery about him which none could fathom, though all acknowledged him to be a very frank, good-hearted fellow; at least, when it suited his purpose to be so. But, to give him his due, he had saved many from drowning; ground the peasant's leasings for nothing (save a little toll); kept a good stock of eels for the sick, and allowed plenty of fishing in his domains. Hence he was not tempted into a belief of superstitious agency, but took upon himself the active proof of what he did, could be explained to himself, if unsatisfactorily, to others. Familiar with the awful howling of winter the dangerous drifting snow-the iced waters and the roaring torrents of flooding waters through the hatches, he regarded none of the old wife's fables, but lived in a vein of humour to enjoy them by aiding their fantacies to escape in the medium of easy belief. It happened, however, in a village inn adventure, that Charles May, a butcher, offered for the price of a new sample bag, to go and watch the reputed ghost that disturbed the bell in Seger church. This being agreed to by the facetious miller and the drinking party, Master Charles twice attempted, but failed. The third time he girded his marrow bones, cleaver and knife, round him to the amusement of some, and the consternation of others of his compeers, and went forth from the village inn, like a Gideonite and man of might. More fortunate in his third enterprise, he gained a peep by a chink into the belfry, and

he beheld as he declared on the veracify of a butcher, that he saw with his own eyes and in his own person, six forms in white merrily dancing round the bellrope that hung from the tower to the ground. Indeed, assisted by the moonlight, he moreover averred, that he could recognise the counte nances of those persons deceased whom he knew familiarly, when living. This sage declaration succeeded, and so terrified the people round the vicinity, when the sight he saw was so confidently circulated, that his wager was immediately decided over heavy potions of the strongest beer in the cellar. It is needless to observe, that the well pleased miller was the challenger to May's courage; and that he, by the aid of sacks, tied by a cross of wood to the rope of each sack at the top, pulled by himself through a hole by a string, deceived the adventurer, and so startled him from his post of observation, as to make his retreat hurried and inevitable.

After this development, and apparently an admissible fact known only to the miller, as yet, many were desirous but afraid of witnessing the ghost dance round the bell-rope. Another bold adventurer, however, in the magnanimous person of Robert Carey, a farmer, ventured thither for a similar wager, caparisoned with a reaping hook and threshing flail, (for it was a sine qua non that he should go alone) saw, to his maddened surprise, the identical ghosts dancing their gay round in merry moonlit pleasure. But, when the bell rung, as he said, the ghosts, save one, sunk into the ground; and this one, slid up the rope into the bell and disappeared. He was also allowed, on his own credence, to win the wager, the value of which the miller gave him cheerfully, he having played a new trick of ghostly domain by the sack deception.

Numerous other devices the jocular miller performed till age clove lines across his forehead and the neighbour hood ceased to be alarmed, but by the fertility of their imagination. The belief, nevertheless, was confirmed as the cloud of mystery spread over their ignorance, that a clangorous ghost inhabited the bell. The clerkly sexton having had words with the miller respecting it, the latter declared if it would be possible, he would visit the bell himself after his death, as a kind of posthumous regard and assist in haunting him, if a survivor, in his du

bious and twofold offices. Time intervened, and delayed the threat for awhile. But after years brought the trial to a nearer result. And, ere the miller gave up the natural ghost,' he made a disclosure of the anatomical and artificial proportions of the supposed one, to his only son. Though the clerkly sexton was accurately informed of this, he was literally afraid to toll the bell on the occasion of the funeral, and the grave-digger trembled so fearfully during the interment, that he started away from the rope ere it was concluded, and the lumps of clay were thrown on the coffin without the bell ringing the foul fiends of the air out of the presence of the dirge. The bell still remains in single blessedness ;' and, like the heads of many in the purlieus of Segery, is as cracked as needs be.

LOVE.

First Love is like the Violet,

Which shuns the searching eye;
It loves the shade, and rudely plucked,
Will fade away and die:

But e'en in death, and fading bloom,
Breathes fragrance from its early tomb.
The Love we know in after years
Is like the full-blown Rose,
Careless who sees its heart's deep core,
Proud of the tint it shows.
Each passer-by a leaf now claims,
Till but a scentless stem remains.
AUGUSTA.

A SKETCH ON THE ROAD.* Come, sweet lass, let's take a cheerful glass. Beggars' Opera. "There-take that," said the stout man in the dicky, putting a small coin into the hand of the cad," and remember, a man never loses anything by civility." He then addressed himself to his next neighbour, a rather pretty young woman; and they got into a conversation which lasted with little intermission from Castle-square, Brighton, to the inn at Crawley. The weather was cold, and with a remark on its severity, he descended from the dickey and entered the inn, from which he emerged again in a few minutes carrying a large goblet of hot brandy and water. With wary feet he ascended the ladder, and gallantly offered the glass to the young female he had chatted with; but she declined even sipping it, and his politeness went no further, though there was another female looking quite as raw and cold on the opposite seat. With the clumsy caution of a bear, he began to descend backwards, Athenæum.