as the rain poureth from a cloud. Much didst thou do to beautify chimney-tops -much to adorn the snuggeries where thou didst dwell;-thieving with thee took a substantial shape, and the robberies of the public passed into a metempsychosis of mortar, and--became publichouses. So there and thus, building and planning, didst thou spin out thy latter yarn, till death came upon thee; and when we looked around, lo! thy brother was on thy hearth. And thy parasites, and thy comrades, and thine ancient pals, and thy portly blowens, they made a murmur, and they packed up their goods-but they turned ere they departed, and they would have worshipped thy brother as they worshipped thee-but he would not! And thy signpost is gone, and mouldered already; and to the Jolly Angler' has succeeded the Jolly Tar!' And thy picture is disappearing fast from the print-shops, and thy name from the mouths of men! And thy brother, whom no one praised while thou livedst, is on a steeple of panegyric, built above the churchyard that contains thy grave. Oh! shifting and volatile hearts of men! Who would be keeper of a public? Who dispense the wine and the juices that gladden, when, the moment the pulse of the hand ceases, the wine and the juices are forgotten? To history-for thy name will be preserved in that record, which, whether it be the Calendar of Newgate or of nations, telleth us alike how men suffer, and sin, and perish-to history we leave the sum and balance of thy merits and thy faults. The sins that were thine, were those of the man to whom pleasure is all in all: thou wert, from root to branch, sap and in heart, what moralists term the libertine ; hence, the light wooing, the quick desertion, the broken faith, the organized perfidy, that manifested thy bearing to those gentler creatures that called thee Gentleman George. Never, to one solitary woman, until the last dull flame of thy dotage, didst thou so behave as to give no foundation to complaint, and no voice to wrong. But who shall say— Be honest to one, but laugh at perfidy to another? Who shall wholly confine treachery to one sex, if to that sex he hold treachery no offence? So in thee, as in all thy tribe, there was a laxness of principle, an insincerity of faith, even unto men :-thy friends, when occasion suited, thou couldst forsake; and thy luxuries were dearer to thee than justice to those who supplied them. Men who love and live for pleasure as thou, are usually good-natured, for their de

votion to pleasure arises from the strength of their constitution, and the strength of their constitution preserves them from the irritations of weaker nerves; so wert thou good-natured, and often generous, and often with thy generosity didst thou unite a delicacy that showed thou hadst an original and a tender sympathy with men. But as those who pursue pleasure are above all others impatient of interruption, so to such as interfered with thy main pursuit, thou didst testify a deep, a lasting, and a revengeful anger. Hence the early gallants who rivalled thee in thy loves, know that to thy last day thou didst never forgive- hence thy bitter and unrelenting hatred of thy unfortunate, though not unoffending wife; hence thy rash and arbitrary indignation when the mob took the part of that forsaken landlady, and insulted thee !— hence the six unjust bills thou didst order to be made out, when thy tax-cart was hit by a stone. But let not these vices of temperament be too severely judged! thou wert in such respects no worse, perhaps, than the members of what may be termed the robbers' aristocracy! Thy tastes, thy qualities, thy principles, thy errors, were rather those of a man frequenting a public, than ruling it. Thou wert the H-d of ale-houses! thy talents, such as they were-and they were the talents of a man of the world-misled thee, rather than guided; for they gave thy mind that demi-philosophy, that indifference to exalted motives, which is generally found in a clever rake, and which we grieve to say characterized the whigrufflers of thy period. Thy education was wretched; thou hadst a smattering of Horace, but thou couldst not write English, and thy letters betray that thou wert wofully ignorant of logic. The fineness of thy taste has been exaggerated; thou wert unacquainted with the nobleness of simplicity; the idea of a whole was grotesque and over-loaded; and thy fancy in details was gaudy and meretricious. But thou hadst thy hand constantly in the public purse, and thou hadst plans and advisers for ever before thee: more than all, thou didst find the houses in that neighbourhood wherein thou didst build, so preternaturally hideous, that thou didst require but little science to be less frightful in thy creations. If thou didst not improve thy native village and thy various homes with a solid, a lofty, and a noble taste, thou didst nevertheless very singularly improve. And thy posterity, in avoiding the faults of thy masonry, will be grateful for the effects of thy ambition.

The same demi-philosophy which influenced thee in private life, exercised a far benigner and happier power over thee in public. Thou wert not idly vexatious in vestries, nor ordinarily tyrannic in thy parish; if thou wert ever arbitrary, it was only when thy pleasure was checked, or thy vanity wounded. At other times thou didst leave events to their legitimate course, so that in thy latter years thou wert justly popular in thy parish; and in thy grave, thy great good fortune will outshine thy few bad qualities, and men will say of thee, with a kindly, nor an unerring judgment-In private life he was not worse than the Rufflers who came to his bar; in public life he was better than those who kept a public before him.' Hark! those huzzas! what is the burthen of that chorus? Oh, grateful and never timeserving Britons, have ye modified already for another the song ye made so solely in honour of Gentleman George? and must we, lest we lose the custom of the public, and the good things of the taproom, must we roar with throats yet hoarse with our fervour for the old words, our ardour for the new ?

'Here's to Mariner Bill, God bless him!
God bless him!

God bless him!
Here's to Mariner Bill, God bless him!'"

THE GUILTY PHANTOM.

By Sir Walter Scott, Bart. I CANNOT forbear giving you an instance of a guilt-formed phantom, which made considerable noise about twenty years ago or more. I am, I think, tolerably correct in the details, though I have lost the account of the trial. Jarvis Matcham -such, if I am not mistaken, was the name of my hero-was pay-sergeant in a regiment, where he was so highly esteemed as a steady and accurate man, that he was permitted opportunity to embezzle a considerable part of the money lodged in his hands for pay of soldiers, bounty of recruits, then a large sum, and other charges which fell within his duty. He was summoned to join his regiment from a town where he had been on the recruiting service, and this perhaps under some shade of suspicion. Matcham perceived discovery was at hand, and would have deserted, had it not been for the presence of a little drummer lad, who was the only one of his party appointed to attend him. In the desperation of his crime, he resolved to murder the poor boy, and avail himself of some balance of money to make his escape. He meditated this wickedness the more readily, that the drum

mer, he thought, had been put as a spy on him. He perpetrated his crime, and, changing his dress after the deed was done, made a long walk across the country to an inn on the Portsmouth road, where he halted, and went to bed, desiring to be called when the first Portsmouth coach came. The waiter summoned him accordingly; but long after remembered, that when he shook the guest by the shoulder, his first words as he awoke were, 66 My God! I did not kill him."

Matcham went to the seaport by the coach, and instantly entered as an ablebodied landsman or marine, I know not which. His sobriety and attention to duty gained him the same good opinion of the officers in his new service which he had enjoyed in the army. He was afloat for several years, and behaved remarkably well in some actions. At length the vessel came into Plymouth, was paid off, and some of the crew, amongst whom was Jarvis Matcham, were dismissed as too old for service. He and another seaman resolved to walk to town, and took the route by Salisbury. It was when within two or three miles of this celebrated city, that they were overtaken by a tempest so sudden, and accompanied with such vivid lightning, and thunder so dreadfully loud, that the obdurate conscience of the old sinner began to be awakened. He expressed more terror than seemed natural for one who was familiar with the war of elements, and began to look and talk so wildly, that his companion became aware that something more than usual was the matter. At length Matcham complained to his companion that the stones rose from the road and flew after him. He desired the man to walk on the other side of the highway, to see if they would follow him when he was alone. The sailor complied, and Jarvis Matcham complained that the stones still flew after him, and did not pursue the other. "But what is worse," he added, coming up to his companion, and whispering, with a tone of mystery and fear," who is that little drummer boy, and what business has he to follow us so closely ?"" I can see no one," answered the seaman, infected by the superstition of his associate. "What! not see that little boy with the bloody pantaloons!" exclaimed the secret murderer, so much to the terror of his comrade, that he conjured him, if he had any thing on his mind, to make a clear conscience as far as confession could do it. The criminal fetched a deep groan, and declared that he was unable longer

to endure the life which he had led for years. He then confessed the murder of the drummer, and added, that as a considerable reward had been offered, he wished his comrade to deliver him up to the magistrates of Salisbury, as he would desire a shipmate to profit by his fate, which he was now convinced was inevitable. Having overcome his friend's objections to this mode of proceeding, Jarvis Matcham was surrendered to justice accordingly, and made a full confession of his guilt. But before the trial the love of life returned. The prisoner denied his confession, and pleaded Not Guilty. By this time, however, full evidence had been procured from other quarters. Witnesses appeared from his former regiment to prove his identity with the murderer and deserter, and the waiter remembered the ominous words which he had spoken when he awoke him to join the Portsmouth coach. Jarvis Matcham was found guilty, and executed. When his last chance of life was over, he returned to his confession, and with his dying breath averred, and truly, as he thought, the truth of the vision on Salisbury Plain. Similar stories might be produced, showing plainly that, under the direction of heaven, the influence of superstitious fear may be the appointed means of bringing the criminal to repentance for his own sake, and to punishment for the advantage of society.

The preceding is from the Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. But Sir Walter is at fault in the date: as Hamlet says, "the time is out of joint." The murder was perpetrated on the Great North Road, near Alconbury, so that the villain's walk must have been "long" " indeed. The date is nearly forty years since. The gibbet on which the murderer was hung at Alconbury, has only been removed within these five or six years.

The Gatherer.

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.
SHAKSPEARE.

THE following piquant passage occurs in a very ably written article in the Westminster Review :-" Patronage of art! Why not patronize poetry? It has, indeed, been the fashion more than once; and what was the result? A Shakspeare or a Milton? No.-Stephen Duck and Mrs. Yearsley. And who are they? Ask Queen Anne and Hannah More, they patronized them, and not

"MILADI MORGAN."

We like the sprightly, unaffected tone of Lady Morgan's triumph over the Quarterly and Blackwood, when she tells us, that at a dinner given to her at Paris, she saw her name elegantly emblazoned "in sugar," upon some delightful dish, which it was almost a pity to partake of. She refers to the fact with a kind of good-humoured glee, and repeats and dotes on the words, "Lady Morgan in sugar," with a full sense of satisfaction, and a half consciousness of the ridicu lous, that is perfectly irresistible.-British Magazine.

ASSOCIATIONS.

EVERY thing now is effected by jointstock companies and co-operative societies; and, from a railway or a tunnel to the dissemination of a Methodist tract, or the reclaiming of a drunkard, all functions, moral or political, are performed in common. Morality is exploitée en grand by the Vice-suppression Society, religion by the various missionary companies, politics by the Birmingham Society and its affiliations; light is served at every man's door by the Portable Gas Company; water is filtered on the same principle; and subscriptions are about forthwith to be taken for a conspiracy to deliver at demand, any where within four miles of the Royal Exchange, a hot mutton-chop and potatoes, every day at six o'clock.-New Monthly Magazine.

NOTHING brings the courage back to the sticking-post so much as a plain, homely expression. This has been proved about one score of times. When Captain Brenton, in the Spartan, was surrounded by a host of enemies superior to his own ship, he called his ship's company on the quarter-deck, and merely said, "There they are, my lads! now, d-n them, we'll thrash them all in a moment, and when we get back to Portsmouth, you shall have your Sallys on board, and I'll hand the pattens up!" It need not be mentioned how gloriously this succeeded!-Ibid.

JUS DIVINUM.

KING JAMES used to say, "to scratch that part of the body which itched, was a pleasure too great for a subject." No doubt his most gracious majesty believed what he said, and lamented he could. not monopolize all that pleasure.

"TO MY EMPTY PURSE.

A Song by Chaucer.

To you my purse, and to no other wight,
Complain I; for ye be my ladie deare;
For certis ye now make me heavy chere,
We were as lefe be laid upon a bere ;
For which unto your mercie thus I crie.
Be heavie once again or els I die.
Now vouchs-afin this day, or it be night,
That I of you the blissful sowne may
here,

Or se your colour lyke the sonne bright;
Ye be my lyfe, ye be my hearti's chere;
Quene of comfort and of good companie,
Be hevie once again, or els I die.
Now, purse, thou art to me my lyfe's
light

And savour, as down in this world here;
Out of this towne help me by your might,
Or I must droop and die without a tear;
But now I pray unto your courtisie,
Be heavie once again, or els I die.

CORNISH "INTELLECT.'

On a certain occasion, a letter was presented to the Mayor of Bossinney, who on receiving the same, began very deliberately to read it upside down; his man, John, on perceiving his master's mistake, attempted to set it right, when his worship replied, "Ner meend thet, Jack, des'nt thee know that I ken reahd za well wan way ez tha tether.”

On another occasion the venerable Mayor of Bodmin, (the seat of the empire of Cornish larnin,) issued a proclamation to this effect :-" Thess ghees notees, thet haul gearhts en pynts be markt, wan wey H var Hale (Ale,) en tha tether way S var Sider (Cider.)

P. O. A POLISHED CORNISHMAN.

ACME OF PICTORIAL DECEPTION.

ZEUXIS and Parrhasius were two famous painters of antiquity. When they contended together for the prize, Zeuxis painted some fruit so naturally, that the birds came to peck at it. When the judges were assembled to decide the contest, they desired that the curtain might be withdrawn, behind which they supposed Parrhasius' picture was placed but they were deceived; the curtain itself was his picture. To Parrhasius was therefore awarded the prize, as he had deceived men, while his rival had only deceived the birds. W. N.

GOOD NEWS FOR BAD POETS.

WITHERS was a puritanical officer in the parliament army, and a great pretender to poetry; but so bad a poet, that when he was taken prisoner by the

(From a Correspondent.)

THE picturesque little island of Nounenwert, situated at the foot of the rock of Rolandseck, or Roland's Tower, with the Drachenfels in the distance, form the subject of the above illustration.

It is here that the beauties of the Rhine (in ascending the river) begin to unfold themselves; the richness of the vineyards extending from the water's edge to the summit of the rocks, the number of ancient feudal castles that crown the heights, the cheerful appearance of the towns and villages strewed along its banks, with the happy character of the peasantry, combine to impress the mind with those feelings of delight which the memory loves to recall long after we have parted from the objects that aroused them.

Lord Byron, on viewing this spot, breathed in the following song the very spirit of this lovely river:

"The castled crag of Drachenfels

Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,

In many places where the ground is too inaccessible to allow of cultivation, terraces have been erected.

VOL. XVI.

U

And hills all rich with blossom'd trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scatter'd cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strewed a scene which I would see
With double joy wert thou with me.
And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o'er this paradise;
Above, the frequent feudal towers
Through green leaves lift their walls of gray,
And many a rock which steeply lours,
And noble arch in prond decay,

Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers;
But one thing wants these banks of Rhine-
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!"*

with the building on the Island (forThe following old legend, connected merly a convent) and Roland's Tower, was related to the correspondent who furnishes the present sketch, while travelling in this delightful country, by one well versed in its legendary lore:

Childe Harold, canto iii. In the note to this song is the following: "The Castle of Drachenfels stands on the highest summit of "The Seven Mountains," over the Rhine banks. It is in ruins, and connected with some singular traditions It is the first in view on the road from Bonn, but on the opposite side of the river.. On this bank, nearly facing it, are the remains of another, called the Jews' Castle, and a large cross, commemorative of the murder of a chief by his brother."

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