France, with the numbers which they circulate. It is supposed that this is doing for the purpose of ascertaining the amount which a small additional tax upon them would produce to the government.

SCOTCH ADVOCATE US. GRIMALKIN.

Mr. C-k, a very singular character at the Scottish bar, was one evening deeply engaged in a case of so great legal intricacy as to compel him to hammer his sapient brains with more than wonted energy. While he was involved in a labyrinth of doubts, his cogitations were interrupted by a succession of horrible sounds, so unearthly, indeed, that they could hardly be exceeded by those in the infernal regions. These fearful noises appeared to the learned counsel to proceed from a legion of cats assembled for an unholy purpose in the green behind his house. Up he started in a fury, and opening the window which immediately overlooked the offending parties, he addressed them as follows: "Leddies and gentlemen, I give you fair warning to betake yourselves to your respective domiciles, for fear of waur quences.' This gentle hint being treated with great contempt, and the horrid din still continuing, away he posts for an immense blunderbuss, loaded with small shot, and again opening the window, read the Riot Act to the obdurate culprits; but without bringing them to a sense of their error. He then complimented them with a salute, and with such fatal precision, that, on the morrow, no less than half-a-dozen unfortunate caterwaulers were discovered stretched lifeless on the sward: Facilis ex amore in mortem transitus.

AVARICE.

conse

A singular instance of avarice was recently witnessed in Paris. A Jew, of the name of Bunck, was found almost lifeless, on a filthy bed, but still grasping the key of his coffers he was taken to the hospital, where he recovered his senses for a few days; but nature was exhausted by age and voluntary privation, and in a short

time he expired, bitterly regretting that he could not take with him his hoarded treasure of about 600,000 francs; 100,000 of which were concealed in different kitchen utensils.

GERMAN INDUSTRY.

Like all their sisters of Saxony, the ladies of Weimar are models of industry; whether at home or abroad, knitting and needle-work know no interruption. A lady, going to a route, would think little of forgetting her fan, but could not spend half an hour without her implements of female industry. A man would be quite pardonable for doubting, on entering such a

drawing room, whether he had not strayed into a school of industry. At Dresden this is carried so far, that even the theatre is not protected against stocking wires. I have seen a lady gravely lay down her work, wipe away the tears which the sorrows of Thekla in Wallenstein's Death had brought into her eyes, and immediately reassume her knitting.

OBSTINACY AND PERSEVERANCE.

Obstinacy and perseverance, though often confounded, are two very different things; a man may be very obstinate, and yet not persevere in his opinion ten minutes. Obstinacy is resistance to truth; perseverance is a continuance in truth or error.

THOMSON.

The Seasons" have lately been translated into Italian prose, by Patrizio Muschi, and published at Florence. There had been several previous translations of them into Italian verse; but their want of success, or the extreme difficulty of the undertaking, induced M. Muschi to prefer prose. A preface contains the life of Thomson, and an analysis of his works.

A new edition of Salathiel, a Story of the Past, the Present, and the Future, is on the eve of publication.

A second edition of Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman, will appear immediately.

THIRD SERIES.]

FEEBLY my lamp is glimmering, about to leave me to the light of the moon and stars. There is it trimmed again -and the sudden increase of lustre cheers the heart within me like a festal strain-and To-Morrow-To-Morrow is Merry Christmas, and when its night descends, there will be mirth and music, and the light sound of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholy walls, and sleep, now reigning over all the house-save this one room-will be banished far over the sea-and Morning will be reluctant to allow her light to break up the innocent orgies.

Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration, painted according to nature-what a Gallery of Pictures! True, that a sameness would pervade them all-but only that kind of sameness that pervades the nocturnal heavens,-one clear night being always, to common eyes, so like another,—for what hath any night to be proud of but one moon and some thousand stars-a vault "darkly, deeply, beautifully blue," here a few braided, and there a few castellated clouds? Yet no two nights ever bore more than a family resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him who has long communed with nature, and is familiar with every smile and frown on her changeful, but not capricious countenance. Even so with the Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that illumine 31 ATHENEUM, VOL. 1. 3d series.

those skies-on ourselves it depends whether they shall be black as Erebus, or brighter than any Aurora.

Day itselfJoy intensifies Never before

My Father's House! How it is ringing, like a grove in spring, with the din of creatures happier, a thousand times happier, than all the birds in the world! It is the Christmas Holidays-Christmas Christmas Night-and Love in every bosom. were we brothers and sisters so dear to one another-never before had our hearts so yearned towards the authors of our being our blissful being! There they sit silent in all that outcry-composed in all that disarray,— still in all that tumult-yet, as one or other flying imp sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully try to catch a prisoner,--a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered cymar be felt almost as a reproof, and, for a moment, slacken the fairy-flight. One old game treads on the heels of another-twenty within the hour,-and many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by the collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies of genius inventive through very delight. Then, all at once, there is a hush, profound as ever falls on some little plat within a Forest, when the moon drops behind the mountain, and the small green-robed People of Peace at once cease their pastime, and evanish. For She-the Silver-Tongued-is about to sing an old ballad, words and

air both hundreds of years old,-and sing she doth, while tears begin to fall, with a voice too mournfully beautiful long to breathe below,―and, ere another Christmas shall come with the falling snows, doomed to be mute on earth-but to be hymning in Heaven! Of that House-to our eyes the fairest of earthly dwellings-with its old ivied turrets, and orchard-garden, bright alike with fruit and with flowers, not one stone remains! The very brook that washed its foundations has vanished along with them,and a crowd of other buildings, wholly without character, has long stood, where here a single tree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne! which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even for one moment have believed was soon to be blotted out from being, and we ourselves, then so linked in love that the band which bound us all together was, in its gentle pressure, felt not nor understood, to be scattered far and abroad, like so many leaves, that after one wild parting rustle are separated by roaring wind-eddies, and brought together no more! The old Abbey,-it still survives, and there, in that corner of the burial-ground, below that part of the wall which was least in ruins, and which we often climbed to reach the starlings' and martins' nests-there, in hopes of a joyful resurrection, lie the Loved and Venerated,-for whom, even now that so many long, long, griefdeadening years have fled, I feel, in this hushed and holy hour, as if it were impiety so utterly to have ceased to weep-so seldom to remember!— and then, with a powerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief-the floods we all wept together at no long interval-on those pale and smiling faces, as they lay in their coffins, most beautiful and most dreadful to behold!

"Childish! childish!" methinks I hear some world-wise thinker cry. But has not one of the wisest of spirits said, "The child is father of the man"? And if so, ought the man

ever to lose sight of any single one of those dear, dim, delightful remembrances, far off and remote, of objects whether alive or dead,—whether instinct with love and intelligence, or but of the insensate sod, that once were to him all his being, so blended was that being then, with all it saw and heard on this musical and lustrous earth, that, as it bounded along in bliss, it was but as the same creation with the grass, the flowers, the streams, the trees, the clouds, the sky and its days and nights,-all of them bound together by one invisible chain,-a green, bright, murmuring, shadowy, floating, sunny and starry world,-of which the enraptured creature that enjoyed it was felt to be the very centre, and the very soul !

Then came a New Series of Christmasses, celebrated, one year in this family, another year in that— none present but those whom the delightful Elia, alias Charles Lamb, calleth the "old familiar faces;" something in all features, and all tones of voice, and all manners, betokening origin from one root-relations all, happy, and with no reason either to be ashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble birth-their lot being cast within that pleasant realm, “the golden mean," where the dwellings are connecting links between the hut and hall, fair edifices resembling manse or mansion-house, according as the atmosphere expands or contracts their dimensions, in which Competence is next-door neighbor to Wealth, and both of them within the daily walk of Contentment.

Merry Christmasses they were indeed-one Lady always presiding, with a figure that once had been the stateliest among the stately, but then somewhat bent, without being bowed down, beneath an easy weight of most venerable years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to all her grandchildren's ears! Nor did those solemn eyes, bedimmed into a pathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that sparkled in orbs that had as yet shed not many tears, but tears of pity or of