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as he toiled and smoked and snorted along the pitch-dark road, the rushing chain seemed to be under his

feet. When Hooks reached home he was rather dead than alive. The clatter of Jack's hoofs on the stones of the court announced his arrival, for his master had no strength left to do it. found lying on his horse's neck, clinging with his arms fast round it. He was lifted off by his servants and conveyed to bed, from which he never again arose. There are strange tales of the terrors of a guilty conscience still circulated in the village, of Sampson Hooks' death-bed; but not a soul pitied him; on the contrary, there was a sort of sullen rejoicing, and there were even those who vowed that the corpse should not reach its grave in peace. My brother, Richard Howitt, in his “ Artediluvian Sketches, and other Poems, seems to have had this man in his mind, for he traced his story well, in the poem entitled

He was

Very

THE VILLAGE TYRANT'S FUNERAL.
The cottage psalm, it was sweetly sung,
As the evening bells of the village rung,
And calmly was closed that Sabbath of rest,
As faded the last crimson beam of the west.
The psalm has ceased, but a crowd is there,
And curses are breathed on the darkening air,
And many are busy, as falls the gloom;
And they talk of a tyrant and his tomb.
And they look to the old church, lone and grey,
And then to the hall of the olden day,
Where the hated in life lies cold on his bier,
And the few that are with him are pale with fear.
And loud is the throng, and they curse the dead
As they wait by the church for the coming tread
Of the few and the fearful that form the train
Of the dead they contemn ; but they wait in vain.

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The moon is up, and the crowd is gone ;
The open grave is deserted and lone,
For the wrong'd and revengeful have pass’d away;
They had waited and vowed; but vain was their stay.
The moon

on high, and the funeral comes ;
And lightly they step by the villagers' homes;
They have gained the church-yard; yet how softly they tread !
They have fear in their hearts; but not fear of the dead.
Ah ! the hate to the dead of the living they fear,
The hate of the many who lately were here;
Who, enraged by the wrongs of the cruel and proud,
Would have torn out the corse from its coffin and shroud.

They have let down the coffin, and heap'd in the mould ;
But no service was read, and no bell has been tollid:
They return from the grave, yet how softly they tread !

The living they fear, and lament not the dead. But though the idea of this poem must have had its origin in this too true story, yet the circumstances attending his funeral were not exactly as here described. No moon shone thus peacefully on the tyrant's open grave, nor lighted him calmly to his rest. Man raged, and Nature raged with him. The villagers, to whom

. he had not left one single foot of their paternal soil, vowed that he should not have one foot of church-yard earth to rest in. They watched and watched, as described in the poem ; but Nature was more successful than they. Nature, which takes to her bosom all her children, spite of their errors or their crimes, raged, but only in mercy. Such a night as that on which the village tyrant actually went to his grave, the villagers declare never came down before or since. Wind in fierce tornadoes, rain in drowning deluges, thunder and lightning terrible and incessant, came sweeping, dashing, roaring and flaming together. The villagers, waiting in deadly wrath for the coming funeral, which had feared the face of day, were fairly driven by the fury of the elements from their purpose. In the midst of the tempest the appointed bearers staggered and reeled along to the grave, and every

moment expected to be dashed with their burden to the earth. As they hurried along the avenue from the Hall, a stupendous tree fell with a crash of thunder across their path, and had nearly been the death of them all. As they approached the church, the storm was so furious, that they were compelled to lower the coffin from their shoulders, and bear it low, scarcely above the surface of the earth. At one moment the whole church and church-yard were lit with the fire of heaven ; the lightning seemed to play round every pinnacle with a lurid radiance, and to fill the church with its blaze, and then there was a darkness as of Egyptian denseness. And amid the blind buffeting and drenching of the tempest, the cowering attendants, without bell or service, light, or the hearing of one another's voices, lowered down the coffin into its muddy, watery pit, and fled.

So went Sampson Hooks to his grave ; and thus, only by the gracious fury of merciful Nature, were his remains protected from the relentless fury of embittered men.

THE DETHRONEMENT OF SUMMER,

A BEAUTEOUS Queen most desolate,
In the thick wilderness bewailing sate
As one by one her loving subjects passed away;
Bowed was her gentle head, around her lay
The tokens of her sway;
And ever through all time,
Came music mingled with a melancholy chime :
The music of light reeds that grows
To melody, accordant with the throes
Of stormy winds, whose advent o'er our leafy earth
Brings messages to testify the birth
Of a sere-featured worth,
A golden crowned king,
Ever breathing desolation in his ministering,

The shadows of those old oak trees
Have trembled at this murmur of the breeze ;
Trembled over dell and pasture, over lea and stream,
Like the faint uncertain action of a dream,
Whose visionary gleam
Looks half reality,
But soon hath left our senses, born to die.

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Anon a louder, wilder shout
Hath shook her fair dominions all throughout;
She cannot choose but weep, that solitary queen ;
Sighing, she leaves her trophies on the green ;
While

mourning what hath been,
From their wood secrecies
Her nymphs peep out with hollow-sunken eyes.
In vain they strike her fallen lute,
No sweet voice answereth their plaintive suit;
The redbreast hearkens not, a truant slave is he
Preparing for his winter company ;
They scarce find heart to flee,
But with dishevelled hair,
Mournfully to their forest haunts repair.

In vain the odorous breath of flowers
To cheer the sovereign of their sunny hours ;
She cannot choose but weep, she hath no part but grief;
Her sorrow paints itself on every leaf,
And fading russet sheaf ;
Meekly she yields her crown,
And with sad gestures lays her sceptre down.

W. BRAILSFORD.

THE GIBBET_ITS DEATH AND BURIAL.

My Lord Judge has just gone out of town with the black cap so smooth and unruffled in his wig-box, that it might be a seraph's wing for the mercy and gentleness that lies upon it. Yes! snug in the veritable wig-box has it lain the whole circuit through, in all probability astonished at its quiescent innocence ; for it is a tough, hard, iron-souled old cap, that in its day has sat mighty and Aaunting on the gorgon head of Statute Law, and crowned its judgments of blood! But now Christ's mercy hides and blots out for ever the shadows of the pale anguished features that have gazed upon it, and left graven pictures of unutterable human woe!

Not that it hasn't on this day been near its work ! A schoolman's atom would have weighed the balance and brought it forth. But jurymen on this day have belied their consciences and tricked the law, and said “ Not guilty ” when guilt has been as evident as the blood that has been spilt. Yet, no! Better let us cry senility of Statute Law; better let us knowingly for once leave the unscotched slimy serpent Evil crawl forth to prey upon society again; better leave the Law of Conscience to fashion its own unerring Law of Justice, than for us to give another text for another sermon of blood, and for another canonization of another saint, who in a week shall reach such an irrefragable, perfect, white-souled state of innocence, that not the equable justice of a good man's life might compare with it in glory. O hangman! O halter! O gibbet ! you have crowned more saints on earth than ethical foresight and political justice have had men courageous enough to shout into the disregarding ear of convention the eternity and progressiveness of their TRUTHS.

And yet, because of this unruffled and seraphic thing, one man

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must starve! Yes! Thugg, the hangman, who the summer circuit through has slunk upon the heels of criminal law and cried "Give, give!" with the vociferating and endless croak of the carrion vulture! Yet not one knot, not one noose ; no, the very rope frayed and limp in his pocket, and he starving: for isnt't his gaudy bandana, his flash ring, his knife, his waistcoat (that has once closed in a gasping, fluttering, ebbing human heart), all pawned? and this for mere bread, till shall come a week's satiety and debauch after the jolly Farce of Saintship won by Slaughter! Yes, but judge and jurymen have plainly said injustice rather than blood : the crowd outside the court door re-echoes the verdict, till it reaches the hangman's ear, and “Not guilty creates anew his ravening hunger ; till the already printed dying speeches are a unit without per-centage or use, unless to boil the provincial Catnach-pot ; and not one nature, save it be the few debased who scout upon the hangman's heels, crave the law's senile prerogative!

He slinks to the jail to borrow a few pence of the outer turnkey; but the good man, well fed and safe in office, hasn't any to spare for a vagabond so cleanly grown out of fashion as a hangman; and with a gruff “Be off !” he turns calmly to his pipe, leaving the other famished and drooping to creep away into the meanest streets of the populous town. Ha ! ha! Vice may soothe him, may give him bread; he curses Good ; it is a demon pursuing his starving footsteps ! He searches with greedy eyes for Sin ; but no! through humble windows the peacefulness of the virtues smiles, and words from the social heart make the wretch's desolation more pitiful ! One word with these many social ones. Cup, the Cup," never omitted in parentheses or otherwise, not by artisans, at their meagre suppers, who give savour to the hardearned bread by words of the triumph of principle ; not by old grey-haired schoolmasters, who rejoice to see at last the coming harvest from the seed long sown ; rarely by mothers, who whisper to their little tiptoed listening bedward children “that the wicked man is not to die ;' not by men in the public houses, who crumple up beside them the newspaper, to call cheerfully for pipes and a fresh pint, and begin discussion of “ Death by the Law” now and then, just as a little honey-drop to dryness by old cobblers and old tailors who must, for the flourishing of curtain lectures at night, lose a thousand stitches over windy arguments regarding predestination and moral necessity; not by nameless frail women, whispering

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