stances; but during his stay at Cambridge he had invented a system of short-hand, which he began to teach at Manchester. In 1723 he was admitted into the Royal Society as a Fellow. About this time his elder brother died without issue, and Byrom was at once placed in ease and affluence. He died September 28th, 1762, in the seventy-second year of his age.]

Two honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand,
One took the other briskly by the hand.

"Hark ye," said he,

About the crows!"
Replied his friend.

"'tis an odd story this

"I don't know what it is," "No! I'm surprised at that,— Where I come from it is the common chat; But you shall hear an odd affair indeed! And that it happened they are all agreed: Not to detain you from a thing so strange, A gentleman who lives not far from 'Change, This week, in short, as all the Alley knows, Taking a vomit, threw up three black crows!" "Impossible!" "Nay, but 'tis really true; I had it from good hands, and so may you." "From whose, I pray?" So, having named the man, Straight to inquire his curious comrade ran. Sir, did you tell?" relating the affair.

"Yes, sir, I did; and, if 'tis worth your care,
'Twas Mr.-such an one- -who told it me;

But by the bye, 'twas two black crows, not three !"
Resolved to trace so wond'rous an event,

Quick to the third the virtuoso went.

"Sir," and so forth. "Why, yes; the thing is fact,
Though in regard to number not exact :
It was not two black crows, 'twas only one;
The truth of that you may depend upon;
The gentleman himself told me the case.'

66

"Where may I find him ?" Why, in "—such a place. Away he went, and having found him out,

"Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt." Then to his last informant he referred,

"Not I!"

And begged to know if true what he had heard.
"Did you, sir, throw up a black crow ?"
"Bless me, how people propagate a lie!

แ

Black crows have been thrown up, three, two, and one;
And here, I find, all comes at last to none !
Did you say nothing of a crow at all?"
"Crow-crow-perhaps I might; now I recall

The matter over. "And pray, sir, what was't?"
Why, I was horrid sick, and at the last

I did throw up, and told my neighbour so,

Something that was-as black, sir, as a crow."

THE DESOLATION OF GREENLAND.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

[James Montgomery was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, November 4th, 1771. At twelve years of age he found himself writing verses, and at twenty he became a newspaper editor, beginning his professional career at a time when it was dangerous for a man to print his thoughts if his sentiments were opposed to the powers that were. Montgomery found himself at three and-twenty a prisoner in York Castle, for printing in his journal a song, not his own, celebrating the fall of the Bastile. The punishment had no effect on him in the sense that was intended; he wrote while in gaol a series of poems, which he called "Prison Amusements." They were published in 1797. In 1806 he produced "The Ocean," a long poem, which had but a moderate success; but it was followed by "The West Indies," which, though brought out in a most expensive form, reached in a short time a sale of ten thousand copies. Montgomery's verses are too calm, gentle, and tender for the youth of the present day; they are soothing rather than invigorating, but they will keep, like good wine; and the older we grow the better we shall like them: but they are not fiery enough for those who indulge in literary dram-drinking. Who has not felt the exquisite pathos of his lines, "Friend after friend departs," and "A Mother's Love?" Mr. Montgomery's chief poems, besides those we have named, are "The Wanderer in Switzerland" (1806), "The World before the Flood" (1812), "Greenland" (1819), "The Pelican Island" (1828). An entire collection of his verses appeared in 1850. His later contributions to literature were numerous and very beautiful “Original Hymns." He was a religious man; but his religion was of no gloomy nor sectarian character. In 1846 the late Sir Robert

Peel bestowed on him a well-deserved pension of £150 a year. He lived in retirement at the Mount, near Sheffield, where he died, 1854.]

ONCE more to Greenland's long-forsaken beach,
Which foot of man again shall never reach,
Imagination wings her flight, explores
The march of Pestilence along the shores,
And sees how Famine in his steps hath paced,
While winter laid the soil for ever waste.
Dwellings are heaps of fallen or falling stones,
The charnel-houses of unburied bones,
On which obscene and prowling monsters fed,
But, with the rapine in their jaws, fell dead.
Thus while Destruction, blasting youth and age,
Raged till it wanted victims for its rage,-
Love, the last feeling that from life retires,
Blew the faint sparks of his unfuell'd fires.
In the cold sunshine of yon narrow dell
Affection lingers;—there two lovers dwell,
Greenland's whole family: nor long forlorn;
There comes a visitant, -a babe is born.
O'er his meek helplessness the parents smiled;
'Twas hope;-for hope is every mother's child:
Then seemed they in that world of solitude
The Eve and Adam of a race renewed.
Brief happiness! too perilous to last;

The moon hath wax'd and waned, and all is past :
Behold the end :-One morn, athwart the wall,
They mark'd the shadow of a reindeer fall,
Bounding in tameless freedom o'er the snow;
The father track'd him, and with fatal bow
Smote down the victim; but before his eyes,
A rabid she-bear pounced upon the prize;
A shaft into the spoiler's flank he sent,

She turned in wrath, and limb from limb had rent
The hunter, but his dagger's plunging steel
With riven bosom made the monster reel;
Unvanquish'd, both to closer combat flew,
Assailants each, till each the other slew:

Mingling their blood from mutual wounds, they lay
Stretch'd on the carcase of their antler'd prey.
Meanwhile his partner waits, her heart at rest,
No burthen but her infant on her breast.
With him she slumbers, or with him she plays,
And tells him all her dreams of future days,
Asks him a thousand questions, feigns replies,
And reads whate'er she wishes in his eyes.

-Red evening comes; no husband's shadow falls
Where fell the reindeer's o'er the latticed walls:
'Tis night; no footstep sounds towards her door:
The day returns,-but he returns no more.
In frenzy, forth she sallies; and with cries,
To which no voice except her own replies
In frightful echoes starting all around,
Where human voice again shall never sound,
She seeks him, finds him not: some angel-guide
In mercy turns her from the corpse aside;
Perhaps his own freed spirit, lingering near,
Who waits to waft her to a happier sphere,
But leads her first, at evening, to their cot,
Where lies the little one all day forgot;
Imparadised in sleep she finds him there,
Kisses his cheek, and breathes a mother's prayer.
Three days she languishes, nor can she shed
One tear between the living and the dead;

When her lost spouse comes o'er the widow's thought,
The pangs of memory are to madness wrought;
But when her suckling's eager lips are felt,
Her heart would fain-but oh! it cannot-melt;
At length it breaks, while on her lap he lies,
With baby wonder gazing in her eyes.
Poor orphan! mine is not a hand to trace
Thy little story, last of all thy race!

Not long thy sufferings; cold and colder grown,
The arms that clasp thee chill thy limbs to stone.

'Tis done :-from Greenland's coast, the latest sigh Bore infant innocence beyond the sky.

221

ALONE IN THE WORLD.

THE vaunted, "well-beloved" Louis XV. died in 1774, and the new ministry appointed on the advent of his successor, having more kindly views, were determined to abate the iniquitous oppressions of the preceding reign. Thus, one of the leading acts of their clemency was an inspection and revision of the registers of those confined as state prisoners in the Bastile, but really in many cases immured there solely under the malign influence of individuals. Many were liberated, and among them one who had been pent within the chill and damp walls of a narrow cell during forty-seven years. Closed from all communication with mankind, beholding no face but that of the gaolers, who, in succession, had daily to provide him with food during nearly half a century, he had endured all these horrors with untiring constancy, although wholly unapprized of the existence or fate of his family or relations.

At length an unusual noise broke upon the stillness of the confines of his cell, the door opened, and a voice he had not heard before bade him come forth! He scarcely knew the import of the words, and, not daring to trust his senses, fancied it a dream. The mandate repeated, he advanced with hesitation, and with trembling steps reached the stairs of his prison; bewildered and confounded he passed on; the hall, the court, and every space that met his eye seemed immense and vast beyond bounds. Stupefied with the novelty of all he saw, his sight became incapacitated to sustain the strong glare of the broad daylight, and he stood still with fixed eyes, unable to move or speak, questioning the reality of his own feelings. Admonitory accents fell on his ear to proceed, and with some further efforts, in which he was partially assisted, he passed beyond the main entrance.

With some consideration, a carriage there awaited him to conduct him to where he said he had formerly lived,