road to his residence. One of the parties present told me there was a way across the fields which would save half a mile, and gave me particular instructions how to find it, adding that it was a common thoroughfare, and I should doubtless see some of the men going or returning from the manufactory. In terested in my play, I pursued it rather longer than usual, but at length hurried away, discovered the footpath across the fields, received the bank - notes, which, according to my invariable practice, I concealed in the lining of my waistcoat, and was returning briskly by the same path, just as the evening began to close around me, when, as I crossed a stile, I heard a rustling in the hedge, and on looking round beheld a villain advancing towards me with an uplifted bludgeon. I raised a stout stick with which I was provided, to repel the assault; but at the same moment received a tremendous blow upon the head from a second ruffian, which stretched me senseless upon the grass.

"The villains, as it afterwards appeared, rifled my pockets of my watch, loose cash and papers, but without discovering my hidden treasure; and in this state of insensibility I was soon afterwards found by some good Samaritans of the lower orders, who, having ascertained that my pockets were empty, generously contented themselves with my hat and coat, as a fair remuneration for the trouble of carrying me to the hospital of a large suburban poor-house at no great distance. In this miserable establishment I fell into the hands of two occasional nurses then in the place, who, upon exercising a more rigorous scrutiny into my habiliments, with a view to those strays and waifs of plunder which such callous practitioners usually claim as their perquisite, discovered the hidden bank notes, and divided them upon the spot as the best security for mutual secrecy.

"My wound was shortly examined and dressed by the hospital surgeon; but the severity of the blow, combining with a violent cold caught by lying upon the wet grass, produced a brain fever, which deprived me of my faculties for several days. In this state the nurse removed me from the public ward to a small detached room, under the pretext of my disturbing the other patients, but in reality that she might have a private chamber in which to give little suppers to her friends with the bank-notes which she had pilfered from my person. It was in this small chamber that, on awaking to recovered consciousness, I

found myself lying upon a miserable truckle-bed, and felt that my arms were pinioned to my sides by a strait waistcoat, while I heard the hospital-clock toll the hour of midnight, accompanied by the hollow howling of the wind through the two long wards into which the building was divided. At first my faculties seemed but slowly to recover their power; and the attempt to arouse my memory to a recollection of the past, only served to mix it up in one confused mass with the present. By degrees, however, beginning to suspect that I had suffered under a temporary privation of reason, I endeavoured, without speaking or moving, to divine the meaning of the scene before me, which was well calculated to confound and puzzle apprehension.

Close to the blazing hearth was a large round table, whereon were flaring three unsnuffed tallow candles, and in the centre of which fumed a brimming and capacious bowl, surrounded by a profuse display of viands, liquors, lemons, sugar, bottles, and glasses. On the mantel-piece were phials, boxes, lint, rags, cataplasms and surgical instruments; and on the fire beneath, a kettle of goodly dimensions was singing its quiet tune to two female figures who completely filled a couple of wide armchairs beside the board, eating, drinking, and chuckling with infinite perseverance and complacency. As one of them had her back to the bed, I could not catch a glimpse of her face; but I observed a pair of red Atlantean shoulders, the flesh of which, heaving up on either side of the shoulder-strap, seemed anxious to escape from the restraint of its bandages. This, as I found by their conversation, was Mrs. Potts, a visitant to my appointed nurse Mrs. Graves, who sat opposite to her in all the dignity of voluminous and undulating fat; and 1 was enabled to make the further discovery that they were carousing upon the spoil which had been ferreted from the lining of my waistcoat. Falstaff typifying Mother Pratt, the fat woman of Brentford, was not a whit more corpulent and cumbersome than these triplechinn'd harpies; and as their dialogue proceeded, I was more than once tempted to wish that I had Ford's cudgel in my hand, and Ford's vigour and goodwill for its exercise.

"Come, Mrs. Potts,' quoth the worthy nurse, 6 you don't drink; fill your glass, fill your glass. Here have I been drinking Madeira ever since this lucky Godsend, to see if I could fancy it as well as Booth's best; but it's sad

watery, washy stuff, compared to blue ruin or heavy wet. Howsomever, I put a bottle into this here bowl of punch, and I don't think it's much the worse."" """Hark! there's the gentleman awake,' cried Mrs. Potts, as I gave an involuntary groan at this appropriation of my money. Well, never mind if he is,' replied Mrs. Graves. Lord love you, he's as mad as a March hare; knows no more what he's talking about than the Pope of Rome.'-Oh, ay, cracked in the upper-story is he?they're rummish customers to deal with, those crazy chaps; but I don't dislike 'em, for one's not bound to atpay any tention to their freaks and fancies. It isn't as if one had Christians to deal with. One on 'em played me a slippery trick, though some years ago. I was dosing away in my chair, not much caring to get up and notice his clamour for water, when, would you believe it, ma'am? he jumps out of bed, and ere you could say Jack Robinson, whips me up in his arms, and claps me right slap upon a great blazing fire!'

"Lord!' exclaimed Mrs. Graves, shrieking with laughter till her whole system swagged with repeated undula tions, how shocking! but it was monstrous comical though, warn't it?'

Not so comical neither, ma'am, if I hadn't happened to have a thick stuff gown on, and a couple of flannel petticoats, so that I got off for this here burn upon my arm and the loss of my clothes. Business runs shameful slack now, Mrs. Graves; no good jobs stirring; though, to be sure, the little bundle of flimsies done up so knowing in this chap's waistcoat was a famous haul; but we have no nice fevers; a terrible time since we had a good measles among the children, and no in fluenzy this here season as there was last. People are scandalous healthy to what they used to be. Then that unlucky vaccine spoils trade shamefully. Old Mother Tibbs remembers when she used to lay out eighteen or twenty children every year, all dead of the smallpox, and come in for all their clothes, besides pickings and perquisites.'

"Very true, very true, Mrs. Potts, our's is a starving business; we must make the most of jobs now; so fill t'other glass, and pick a bit more of the pigeon pie. Here's to you, ma'am. Howsomever I have no reason to complain; for, what with gentlemen's broken limbs from gigs, and their shooting themselves, or one another, in the sporting season, there's always some lucky misfortune or another turning up.

'Twas but last month I set a chap of this sort upon his crutches, who had eighty-three shots lodged in his calf, by his friend Capt. Blinkensop, when taking aim at a hare—'

"Eighty-three shot! that's a large lot ain't it?'

"Yes, but one wouldn't be niggardly with a friend, you know. Ha! ha ha!'

"Ay, ay, you will have your laugh, Mrs. Graves; but you were always a wag. Well, my last job was with Lady Psha? I shall forget my own name next. Lady What-d'ye-call-she as had the fine funeral t'other day; it's no odds for her name, and a pretty plague she was!-Always a grumbling 'cause I took snuff. Will you have a pinch, Mrs. Graves? What odds if a little did fall into the broth or gruel now and then? I warrant it's as good as pepper any day in the year. That's the second lady of quality as I had the job

on.

Last Michaelmas was a year (I remember it by the famous goose my nevvy sent me out of Yorkshire,) that I laid out Lady Augusta Yellowley, at last, after she had gone on shilly-shallying for seven or eight weeks; and, would you believe it, ma'am? they were shabby enough not to let me have an Ingey shawl, though she died in it, pretending I wasn't entitled to nothing but the body-linen.'

"Well, Mrs. Potts, that's the very way they served me when Alderman Sowerby's lady hopped the twig. Howsomever, they got nothing by it; for, in packing up my box, a large white lace veil slipped in by mere accident: and as they never sent for it, of course I warn't bound to give it up.'

"These accidents will happen to the most careful of us, Mrs. Graves. Ha! ha ha! and really they shouldn't look too closely into these matters, for our perquisites now-a-days are no great shakes. What's peck and perch, and a pound a week? Why, I got as much twenty year ago, when I was in the wet line and went out a-suckling. I've known the day, too, when a hint of a good subject to a resurrection-man was worth a couple of guineas; but Lord love you! they make such a fuss about the matter now-a-days, that the poor fellows can hardly get salt to their porridge. And then folks dies such shabby shrivelled atomies of late, that they're scarcely worth the cutting up. If one could get hold of a nice proper young man, now, shot in a duel."

"Ay, Mrs. Potts, or this here gentleman that's lying on the bed; he's in

the prime of life, stout and healthy, just the proper age and subject for dying; but somehow my mind misgives me strangely that the chap will recover.' "Let us hope not, let us hope not; it would be a monstrous shame :-here's to you, Mrs. Graves.' "It would really be a pity,' replied the latter, refilling her glass; for, what with the flimsies in his waistcoat, and what with the body, he might be one of the prettiest jobs we have had a long while.In this strain the conver, sation continued some time longer, and as I knew my helpless state, and really apprehended that these harpies might strangle or make away with me if they suspected my recovery, I remained perfectly still, pretending to be asleep, until the huge bowl of Madeira punch being completely emptied, my two companions began to nod at one another, and finally snored so unmercifully that I was effectually prevented from joining in the chorus. Waiting impatiently the arrival of the medical attendant next morning, I communicated to him the recovery of my senses, imploring that I might be instantly sent to a friend's house in the town, as I felt quite able to bear the removal. Here my health was in a few days perfectly re-established, and it was my first care to obtain the dismissal of the nurses, and compel them to refund the remainder of their plunder. As to the scoundrels who had attacked me, although I had no doubt they were the same with whom I had been playing billiards, I had no means of identifying them, so I left them for the present uninterrupted in their progress to the gallows; and mounting my nag and companion, for he deserves both appellations, I joyfully turned my back upon this unlucky town."

LORD BYRON.

We intend to notice Mr. Galt's Life of Lord Byron, at some length, in our next Number. For the present we merely quote the following short extracts :—

"It is singular, and I am not aware it has been before noticed, that, with all his tender and impassioned apostrophes to beauty and love, Byron has in no instance, not even in the freest passages of Don Juan, associated either the one or the other with sensual images. The extravagance of Shakspeare's Juliet, when she speaks of Romeo being cut after death into stars, that all the world may be in love with night, is flame and ecstacy compared to the icy metaphysi

cal glitter of Byron's amorous allusions. The verses beginning with

'She walks in beauty like the light
Of eastern climes and starry skies,'

is a perfect example of what I have conceived of his bodiless admiration of beauty and objectless enthusiasm of love. The sentiment itself is unquestionably in the highest mood of the intellectual sense of beauty; the simile is, however, any thing but such an image as the beauty of woman would suggest. It is only the remembrance of some impression or imagination of the loveliness of a twilight applied to an object that awakened the same abstract general idea of beauty. The fancy which could conceive in its passion the charms of a female to be like the glow of the evening, or the general effect of the midnight stars, must have been enamoured of some beautiful abstraction, rather than aught of flesh and blood. Poets and lovers have compared the complexion of their mistresses to the hues of the morning or of the evening, and their eyes to the dew-drops and the stars; but it has no place in the feelings of man to think of female charms in the sense of admiration which the beauties of the morning or the evening awaken. It is to make the simile the principal. Perhaps, however, it may be as well to defer the criticism to which this peculiar characteristic of Byron's amatory effusions give rise until we shall come to estimate his general powers as a poet. There is upon the subject of love, no doubt, much beautiful composition throughout his works, but not one line in all the thousands which shows a sexual feeling of female attraction-all is vague and passionless, save in the delicious rhythm of the

verse."

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"I have never been able to understand why it has been so often supposed that sition of his different works by any other Lord Byron was actuated in the compomotive than enjoyment: perhaps no poet had ever less of an ulterior purpose in his mind during the fits of inspiration (for the epithet may be applied correctly to him and to the moods in which he was accustomed to write), than this singular and impassioned man. Those who imagine that he had any intention to impair the reverence due to religion, or to weaken the hinges of moral action, give him credit for far more design and prospective purpose than he possessed.They could have known nothing of the man; ; the main defect of whose character, in relation to every thing, was in

"One day, as a friend of mine was conversing with his lordship, at the Casa Saluzzi, on the moral impressions of magnificent scenery, he happened to remark that he thought the view of the Alps in the evening, from Turin, the sublimest scene he had ever beheld. It is impossible,' said he 'at such a time, when all the west is golden and glowing behind them to contemplate such vast masses of the Deity without being awed into rest, and forgetting such things as man and his follies.'Hunt,' said his lordship, smiling, 'has no perception of the sublimity of alpine scenery; he calls a mountain a great impostor.'"

The Gatherer.

"A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles." SHAKSPEARE.

IMITATION.

A SILK-MERCER had associated with Shuter till he caught, not only all his best jokes and ditties, but the very manner in which they were given. The latter hearing this, determined to visit a club one evening, which this gentleman frequented, and see what would be the effect of his good things at first hand, which had told so well at second. He did so; but soon lost both humour and temper, at hearing the worthy cits, whenever he attempted to be funny, respond mith mingled wonder and delight, "How like Tom Bennet!"

(From the Chinese.) THERE was, in a certain house, a child who was constantly screaming and annoying everybody. At last a doctor was sent for, who gave him a draught, and desirous of ascertaining the calming effects of his potion, stayed in the house during the night. After some time, hearing no more crying, he exclaimed, "The child is cured." "Yes," was the reply, "the child cries no more, but W. G. C. the mother is weeping.

FAIRY RINGS.

IN the days of England's lost and beautiful mythology, it was a common belief that those withered rings which are so frequently observed on the grass, had been the scenes of the moonlight revels W. G. C. of fairies.

Printed and Published by J. LIMBIRD, 143, Strand (near Somerset House,) London; sold by ERNEST FLEISCHER, 626, New Market Leipsic; and by all Newsmen and Booksellers

WE are old enough to remember, circumstantially, the removal of the Bourbon family from their retreat at Hartwell. All the great and glorious doings at Berkhampstead on that occasion are as fresh in our recollection as the incidents of yesterday: how, with about four score and ten companions, we were then let loose from schooldom, to congratulate the exiled king on his restoration. In the sunshine of our enjoyment we thought it a mere holiday treat ;-the better and holier influence was to teach us to respect misfortune, and encourage those kindly feelings which spring from the "sweet uses of adversity.'

Feelings akin to these invest the above Engraving with peculiar interest at the present moment. The asylum of fallen royalty has some attraction, however lowly the "divinity" which "doth hedge a king," may be rated. The Castle itself is, moreover, a place of note, and is what topographers call "a noble pile." It occupies an eminence in the south-east corner of an extensive park, and commands a fine view of the sea from an VOL. XVI. P

opening between the hills, as well as extensive inland prospects. The coast, too, is of great natural beauty; for every tourist must remember the Cove, or beautiful basin of Lullworth, and the arched rock in its vicinity.

The present Castle of Lullworth is not of any great antiquity; but is supposed to be on or near the site of a castle mentioned as far back as the year 1146. The materials for building it were brought principally from the ruins of Bindon Abbey, not very distant. The foundation was laid in the year 1588; and the structure, except its internal decorations, finished in 1609: the latter were not completed till after the year 1641, when the ancestor of the present owner, James Weld, Esq., purchased the estate.* Perhaps we cannot do better than quote the general description of the Castle from Hutchins's History of Dorset:+

"Lullworth Castle is an exact cube of eighty feet, with a round tower at each

Beauties of England and Wales, vol. iv. † Vol. ii. p. 227.

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