Think of the name of John upon a title-page!

It damns the book at the first sight; and reasonably
People no sooner see it, than they conclude
They've read the work before.-Oh, I must say
My father made a pretty business of it
Calling me John! me, 'faith-his eldest son!
Heir to his-poverty! Why, there's not a writ,
But, nine times out of ten, is served on John,
And what still more annoys me, not a bill:
Your promiser to pay is always John.

Here, wand'ring long, amid these frowning fields,
I sought the simple life that nature yields;
Rapine, and wrong, and fear usurp'd her place,
And a bold, artful, surly savage race,
Wait on the shore, and, as the waves run high,
On the tost vessel bend their eager eye;
Which to their coast directs its vent'rous way,
Theirs, or the ocean's, miserable prey.

Crabbe.

In the course of a peripatetic excursion through the south-western provinces of England, I found myself slowly pacing the summit of the rough cliffs that fringe the British coast. I had been walking since daybreak-it was then high noon-and I had partaken of no refreshment, save a draught of milk which I had purchased from an old crone in the precincts of the bleak and romantic Dartmoor, whose gloomy mazes I had since been threading with persevering industry. A small bundle, consisting of a change of linen tied up in a handkerchief, was fastened to the end of a tough oak stick, and slung over my shoulder. I had kept on my solitary march till my onward progress was stopped by the table land terminating in a precipitous cliff, at whose feet the sluggish waves of the 'channel stream were lazily beating.

I gazed anxiously around. I was alone. The gentle rippling of the sea could not be heard in the altitude of my position; the clouds sailed along the sky, and the wild birds flew past me as I gazed-not a sign of humanity could I perceive, except the distant ships as they glided slowly on their way. After some little wandering to and fro, I observed a scarcely discernible path along the edge of the cliff. Turning to the right, at a venture, I followed the sinuosities of this footway for a considerable distance without seeing either a public or private house, or any thing in the shape of

man.

|

rather startled me, but I put on an air of resolution as I hobbled over the loose stones, barefooted, and said, with a big voice

Hallo, there! What are you doing with my bun

dle ?"

The man civilly touched his hat, and quietly said, "Preventive service, sir." I knew at once what he meant, and wondered at my stupidity in not having perceived it from the first. I ought to have recollected that bands of armed sailors were placed along the coast of England for the prevention of smuggling, and that the rough visaged tar was merely fulfilling his duty in turning over my half-dozen shirts and stockings to see that laces and silks of French manufacture were not concealed in their involutions.

He finished his search, and, tying up my bundle carefully, gave it me back with a sort of apologizing grin.

"From whence did you come upon me so abruptly?" said I.

Turning an enormous quid of tobacco in his still more enormous mouth, he pointed to a gully or ravine. worn by the rains in their course from the upland, and in whose recesses he had doubtless been concealed. "Am I near any town or village?"

He spoke not, but gave his huge head, whiskers, tarpaulin, and quid, a negative shake.

"Is there any public house or tavern in the neighborhood where I can procure refreshment!"

He pointed the course I had been pursuing, and merely said "Two miles." I was about to ask him farther particulars, and why he was so short in his replies, when he touched his hat, and sprung lightly up the steps in the cliff which I had found so difficult to descend.

Before the expiration of the hour, I was seated at Fatigued and footsore, I crept down a long and dan- the door of a rude hostelry, known by the sign of the gerous flight of steps rudely cut in the rocky cliff, and White Horse. In every village or hamlet in England. descended to the beech, intending to doff my shoes and the White Horse is sure to be the most conspicuous. stockings, and wash my blistered feet-a luxury that and frequently, the only sign, unless a retired butler every pedestrian can appreciate, and peculiarly grate- or footman from "the great house" in the neighbor ful after the long and harassing walk into which I had hood has ventured to establish an opposition tavers unconsciously been betrayed. My little allowance of by the road side, and exhibit to the gaze of the won luggage was placed in a snug nook or cleft in the rock, dering ploughman, a sign post covered with gaudy and, sitting down on the shingle stones of the beach, hieroglyphs, intending to represent the coat of arms I proceeded to put my intentions into execution; when of the landlord's former master. But the White Horse looking up, I saw my bundle in the hands of a tall, is the predominant device, and doubtless has retained hard featured man, dressed in loose shaggy trowsers, its popularity from the days of the Heptarchy, when an immense pea jacket, and tarpaulin hat. As he the banners of the Saxons, with a white horse conturned round to answer my hail, the butts of more spicuously emblazoned, “flouted all the land." than one pair of pistols were visible in his belt, and I The establishment in question was a pot-house or heard his cutlass jingle against the rock. The sudden-hedge ale-house of the poorest description; a sanded ness of his presence and the ferocity of his appearance parlor, and a small nook that served for bar and kit

'Oh, yes, sir, a werry comfortable quantity indeed -some years more than others. Last year, Providence was remarkably good to us. We had six or seven werry fine wrecks, werry. Some on 'em was noble wessels. Though wrecks is scarcer since we lost the pony."

Lost a pony! What connection can there be between a horse and a shipwreck?"

"Lor' bless you, you are unaccountable ignorant, werry. There's floating lights moored off our coast a few miles to the westerd, to tell captains where the way lays to get to harbor. So we ties a large lantern about the neck of our pony, and slings up his near fore foot to make him pitch in his walk, and then we gently parades him over the beach on a werry dark night, and the stumbling of the animal and the swinging of the lantern makes it look as if it was fixed to a hull what's tossed by the waves. So if the captains of the wessels a'n't quite right in their reckoning, they comes straight up to the light, and gets too near the rocks to get back again. That little pony drawed us more wrecks than--"

Pray, how did you lose this valuable little animal?”

"Waluable, indeed! There's a frigate off the pint, yonder, a receiving ship for the prewentive men; and no sooner is a ship ashore, than out comes all the king's sailors and takes our hard earnings out of our werry mouths. One lovely stormy night, we was a walking the pony, when they circumwented us and stole the animal. Great loss, werry. All owing to the quantity of popperlation-if there wasn't so many "Is there much farming done in the neighbor- sailors, there wouldn't be no prewentive men to interhood ?"

fere with our lawful rights."

"Were many bodies washed ashore from the wrecks | palace of luxury and wealth. of last year?"

The most poverty.

stricken hut, built of oddly sorted bulk heads and ship's gratings, had, for its door post, a gaudily painted carving of Plenty holding forth her cornucopia of rarest fruits-it had been the figure head of a merchant vessel; while, as if in studied mockery, two squalid brats were fighting for a boiled potatoe which had been coaxed from the landlady, and a long-backed famine-struck sow was vainly seeking for her swill in a brass bound wine cooler.

Pray, is not murder likely to be an occasional place?"

attendant on such conduct?"

"There's four or five more in the Cat's Nook on the beach-walk half a score yards this here way and we can see 'em. There's the original settlers-t'others, near the White Horse, is the interlopers, the extr popperlation. When I come here, we was but fourteen in all, and made money like fun. Now there's sixty, and wrecks a'n't a bit more plentiful, and sheep don't break their necks a bit oftener-to say nothing of no pony-which makes times awful bad, werry," "Who lives in that boat-hut on the cliff?" "Joe Weasel, our head man. He inwented the rocking lights-the lantern on the pony, you know; he is quite a benefactor like. Lives up there to see what's in the wind. I do believe he smells a wreck or a free trade lugger, for he always tells us when we shall be wanted."

"Murder! lor' bless your silly head, no! What an idea! Between ourselves, in confidence, you know, I did hear that once there was an old fellow, a little shrivelled yeller-looking thing with a wrinkled face, what crawled out of the water and began to bother us just as we was so delightfully engaged with the wreck of a home ward-bound East Indiaman. The tide was ebbing fast, and we wanted to save as many of the things as we could before the flood, when the old man came down the beach, and claimed them all as his property. It was enough to wex a saint. Well, somehow, the old man slipped off a rock into the sea, and I believe that Joe Weasel did rather push him with a spar right out into the strength of the ebb, and told him to go to the ship and get his papers, and when he came back, he should have his property. But the poor dear old man never did come back, and it saved a great deal of trouble, werry." "How do you dispose of the proceeds of your traffic, and condemned by the proper authorities to be felony ?"

Felony! Good gracious! don't let 'em hear you! but for me, I'm not a proud man, and know how to take a joke. Government don't use us well-the frigate's people is a knocking up wrecking as well as smuggling-they nibbles a deal of our savings; and sometimes there is people left alive what we can't poke off in the ebb, and they takes all they can get. But we contrive to keep an odd thing or so back, even then, besides getting a pretty tolerable salvage. We had a delightful wreck about four years ago-a regular break-up—a foreign merchantman, and not one of the poor devils left alive, which was quite a mercy, you know. Such silks and things-a perfect god send! Then comes the Jews round to buy up what we made-how their eyes did twinkle, surely. You may see what we do with them things we can't sell." Some few rods northward of the house, and under the lee of a high chalk hill, were placed about a dozen or twenty miserable huts. They were built chiefly with the ship timber that had been cast ashore, although the ribs and knees of solid oak were occasionally mixed with the rough and unhewn logs from the forest. Beneath a mud roof, patched with the green and rank vegetation of the half dried turf, might be seen the cabin windows and handsome carved work of a ship's stern; the places of the broken panes filled with rags and paper. Another rickety hovel, with many a gaping fissure in its cracked clay walls, boasted of a polished satin-wood door with gilded cornices that once graced the state room of an Indiaman-a floating

The hut was composed of the stern end of one of the broad and deep boats used by the smugglers; & had been taken by the revenue officers in the illegal

sawed in half. The wrecker secured the biggest portion, and, placed end-wise against the hill side, a rather in a small nook on the very edge of the clif nothing was wanting but some slight boarding and i door to form it into a dwelling place; in this miserable substitute for a habitation, a man, his wife, and two children had dwelt for several years.

Have you any gentry residing in the neighbor hood?"

None at all, sir. We had a lawyer here a little while, but we starved him out. He was too proud & smuggle, and too lazy to get up on a dark night to g a wrecking; though he was always willing to be whatever we made, and we was werry willing sell, werry; but he never had no money—and it's a bad business selling wreckings on tick. He was! a bad sort of fellow for a lawyer-rode his horse, and drunk the real moonshine, and never told no tals But though he set us all a quarrelling, he couldn't ge us to law, because, like him, we'd never no money. Well, six weeks used him up. He was going to E eter to live, and so as we knowed he couldn't tak his pony with him in the coach, Joe Weasel just kä it a little bit like for a day or two about the time his starting.

So, so; that is the way you obtained your quad ruped, eh?"

"Yes, sir. Noble fellow that Joe-a public spirited individual, werry. There's the station house for them prewentives what sleeps ashore—it's half a mile off of the cliff, but in course we counts them as nothing.

We had, some years ago, a real gentleman live at that | ridges of sharp rock ran from the shore, and hid their brick house in the walley, but he met with a misfor- destructive points just below the surface of the treachtune that made it disagreeable for him to live here erous wave. The mountainous barriers of the land any longer." reared their gigantic heads at the very water's edge, except where a long strip of sandy earth, called by the beachmen a bill, stretched many hundred yards into the sea, adding to the intricacies of the navigation, and affording a footing to myriads of wild fowl. Be

"A serious misfortune, then, I suppose."

"Yes, sir, rather. He was drowned one day before dinner; awkward job that, sir, werry. A boatful was upset, and the whole boiling went to pot. But I see that my missus has laid the eggs on the table, and theyond this bill, the cliff trended somewhat suddenly to bacon's frizzed, and the ale drawed; don't let us be sp'iling the dinner and have the fat get cold—bad thing, that, werry."

CHAPTER II.

the east, rising still higher at the immediate point, and constituting a landmark of peculiar formation.

The bill or strip of land, like a natural breakwater, gave security to the anchorage under its lee, and sufficient shelter to the humble craft of that portion of the coast. Seated on a loose rock at the neck of the bill, I enjoyed the surpassing beauty of the scenery around. The cliff rose behind me perpendicular for many a

Falstaff.-Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou dost, fathom; the quiet waters of the humble roadsted were

and do it with unwashed hands too. Bardolph.-Do, my lord.

Shakspeare.

bosom of the deep blue sea as if it was a thing of quietness and peace, and had never dealt the iron death around. A revenue cutter was anchored within a cable's length of the beach, sitting, like Byron's swan, upon her shadow-the distinguishing pennant, which marked her as a king's craft, was clinging idly to her mast; and the half-hoisted jib was hanging over her bows unmoved by breath of breeze. A few humble barks, belonging to the neighboring fishermen, were moored close in shore; the setting sun casting a lengthy shadow of their slender masts across the tiny ripples, whose tips were gilded by the departing glory of his beams. The clouds seemed motionless; and the screaming gull and saddle-backed crow flew heavily along, as if unwilling to disturb the harmonious repose connected with the scene.

spread before me. In the offing, far to the right, was moored the frigate mentioned by my host-the webMINE host's attempts at humor, in his descriptions, like tracery of her masts and cordage were clearly formed, in my mind, but a sorry palliative for the perceptible in relief against the bright glories of the course of rapine which, with so much nonchalance, western sky; her taut-braced spars were straight as the he confessed he was pursuing. I was in a bad neigh-horizon line, and the low, dark hull sat upon the borhood, and felt that there was almost a positive ne cessity of removal from my present quarters, unless I wished to be " poked into the ebb tide," or muttonized "over the cliff." When our frugal meal was at an end, I abstracted a genuine Habana from my cigar case, and throwing my feet up on the settle in the sanded parlor, endeavored to compose my mind and repose my limbs. The landlady was busily employed in scouring bright her pots and pans after their unfrequent use; mine host was occupied with a pipe of Dutch short-cut, and silence and smoke were predominant. A gentle tap at the window caused me to turn my head, and I beheld, peeping into the room, as ugly a countenance as imagination can conceive. Gray, cat-like eyes, deeply set beneath an overhanging brow; a hooked nose of enormous proportions; an aperture of frightful shape, termed, by courtesy, a mouth; with a deep blood-red scar in the sallow cheek that drew one side of the face completely down. The lower part of this lovely frontispiece was entirely enveloped in thick, sandy hair-beard, whiskers, and mustachios blended into one bush. The landlord obeyed the beck of this frightful personage, and, in a few minutes I saw them winding slowly up the hill path to the left. Upon inquiry I found that the visiter was Joe Weasel, the public benefactor; and he had doubtless called the landlord out to consult him on some new scheme of villany.

Anxious to quit this suspicious neighborhood, I inquired of the hostess the distance to the next village or market town, and found that it was much too far to attempt to reach it that evening. I retired to my bed chamber, and found that there was a good bolt inside the door-the only entrance to the room. Perfectly satisfied upon that point, I sallied forth for a little ramble, bending my steps towards the Cat's Nook, a narrow tortuous defile in the cliffs, and communicating with the beach.

How beautiful the saucy little Fox looks," said a voice at my elbow. I turned round, and recognized my friend of the morning, the rough but honest looking tar engaged in the preventive service.

You are again upon me before I knew of your approach," said I.

Ay, ay, sir; not much difficulty in that-this sand don't sound in walking. Look at that saucy little Fox! don't she look a witch ?" said he, glancing at the revenue cutter with an eye of affection-" and that crack craft in the offing there, to be boxed up here, ruled by the guagers, and employed in catching smugglers, and fishing up gin tubs-it is too bad, a'n't it, sir?"

"Not a very honorable pursuit,” said I, "certainly. But how is it that you are now inclined to be so chatty when you were so short and sententious this morning?"

Off duty, sir," said the sailor, with a real forecastle touch of his tarpaulin's tip. We are not allowed to answer questions during our watch-so we wind up the slack of our jawing tackle round the be

It was, indeed, a dangerous coast. Long, narrow laying pin of the flag staff at the station house. But